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OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



)XJ.^^ 0^^-^. UJj^aJllM* 











From Day to Day 
With Holmes 












COMPILED BY 

WALLACE AND FRANCES RICE 

> 












NEW YORK 

BARSE & HOPKINS 

PUBLISHERS 











Copyright, 1911, 

BY 

BARSE & HOPKINS 



A\-^ 



©CI. A 2 924 8 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH 
HOLMES 

JANUARY 

January First 

Life is a great bundle of little things, I said. 

The divinity-student smiled. 

You smile, I said. Perhaps hfe seems to you 
a little bundle of great things.? 

The divinity-student started a laugh, but 
suddenly reined it back with a pull, as one 
throws a horse on his haunches. — Life is a great 
bundle of great things, he said. The Autocrat. 

January Second 

Storms, thunders, waves ! 
Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill; 
Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still 

But in their graves. Daily Trials. 

January Third 

The question is not, what it is reasonable for 
a man to think about, but what he actually does 
think about. 

The Professor at the Breakfast Table. 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

January Foueth 

Ah ! many lids Love lurks between, 
Nor heeds the coloring of his screen ; 
And when his random arrows fly, 
The victim falls, but knows not why. 
Gaze not upon his shield of jet, 
The shaft upon the string is set; 
Look not beneath his azure veil, 
Though every limb were cased in mail. 

The Dilemma. 

January Fifth 

Memory is a net ; one finds it full of fish 
when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen 
miles of water have run through it without stick- 
ing. The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table. 

January Sixth 

Double vision with the eyes of the heart is 
a dangerous physiological state, and may lead 
to missteps and serious falls. Elsie Vernier. 

January Seventh 

The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great 
deal more for her than the judge's wig or the 
priest's surplice. The Guardian Angel. 

[8] 



FR OM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

January Eighth 

Romance ! Was there ever a boarding-house 
in the world where the seemingly prosaic table 
had not a living fresco for its background, 
where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke 
and fire of some upheaving sentiment, or the 
dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out pas- 
sions? You look on the black bombazine and 
high-necked decorum of your neighbor, and no 
more think of the real life that underlies this 
despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you 
thmk of a stone trilobite as having once been 
full of the juices and the nervous thrills of 
throbbing and self-conscious being. 

The Professor. 

January Ninth 

One of my friends had a little marble statu- 
ette of Cupid in the parlor of his country- 
house, — bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. 
A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking 
pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the 
house "if that was a statoo of her deceased 
infant.?" What a delicious, though somewhat 
voluminous biography, social, educational, and 
esthetic, in that brief question ! 

The Autocrat. 

[9] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>?<>?< >?v >j< vjv >j«c y^v y|y 7?v v;v vj»c vt< >^->jir >jv >;<>;< >j»c 

January Tenth 

A very young and very pretty girl is some- 
times quite charming in a costume which thinks 
of nothing less than of being attractive. 

The Guardian Angel. 

Januaby Eleventh 

There are women, and even girls, with whom 
it is of no use to talk. One might as well reason 
with a bee as to the form of his cell, or with an 
oriole as to the construction of his swinging 
nest, as try to stir these creatures from their 
own way of doing their own work. 

The Professor. 

January Twelfth 

It must be remembered tliat symmetry and 
elegance of features and figure, like perfectly 
formed cr^'stals in the mineral world, are 
reached only by insuring a certain necessary 
repose to individuals and generations. 

Elsie Venner. 

January Thirteenth 

Good feeling helps society to make liars of 
most of us, — not absolute liars, but such care- 
less handlers of truth that its sharp corners 
get terribly rounded. The Autocrat. 

[10] 



I 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

7P"?t^'>?5r>i< >?< vi< y^i. >}<74^>?v >^ v^ y^'Ojv >?«k >?< >*«c >^ 

January Fourteenth 

No man or woman can appropriate beauty 
without paying for it, — in endowments, in 
fortune, in position, in self-surrender, or other 
valuable stock ; and there are a great many 
who are too poor, too ordinary, too humble, too 
busy, too proud, to pay any of these prices 
for it. 

Elsie Venner. 

January Fifteenth 

Provincialism has no scale of excellence in 
man or vegetable ; it never knows a first rate 
article of either kind when it has it, and is con- 
stantly taking second and third rate ones for 
Nature's best. 

The Autocrat. 

January Sixteenth 

Many young girls have a strange audacity 
blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in 
physical daring many of them are a match for 
boys ; whereas you will find few among mature 
women, and especially if they are mothers, who 
do not confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, 
their timidity. 

The Professor. 

[11] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
y^yis:yfiKVii. >?>?>;<>;< v|< 7^ v?< >?< vjr7?«'>i*r >;<>^ >;<>k 

January Seventeenth 

True love leads many wandering souls into 
the better way. Nor is it rare to see those who 
started in company for the gates of pearl seated 
together on the banks that border the avenue 
to that other portal, gathering the roses for 
which it is so famous. The Guardian Angel. 

January Eighteenth 

I wish I were half as good as many heathens 
have been. Dying for a principle seems to me 
a higher degree of virtue than scolding for it; 
and the history of heathen races is full of in- 
stances where men have laid down their lives 
for the love of their kind, of their country, of 
truth, nay, even for simple manhood's sake, or 
to show their obedience or fidelity. 

The Professor. 

January Nineteenth 

We may happen to be very dull folks, you 
and I, and probably are, unless there is some 
particular reason to suppose the contrary. 
But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere 
of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we 
are now, may sail in vast circles round the 
largest compass of earthly intelligences. 

The Autocrat. 

[12] 



FROIM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yiKyiK^fKynK yjv >iv>jc>j< >^ >?< 7}^ >jv vjoj^"^ >jv vj«c vj< 

Januaky Twentieth 

No Alpine needle, with its climbing spire. 
Brings down for mortals the Promethean fire, 
If careless Nature have forgot to frame 
An altar worthy of the sacred flame. 

Urania. 

January Twenty-first 

Little I ask ; my wants are few ; 

I only wish a hut of stone, 
(A very plain brown stone will do,) 

That I may call my own ; — 
And close at hand is such a one, 

In yonder street that fronts the sun. 

I care not much for gold or land ; 

Give me a mortgage here and there, — 
Some good bank-stock, — some note of hand, 

Or trifling railroad share ; — 
I only ask that Fortune send 
A little more than I shall spend. 

Jewels are baubles ; 'tis a sin 

To care for such unfruitful things ; — 
One good-sized diamond in a pin, — 

Some, not so large, in rings, — 
A ruby, and a pearl, or so. 
Will do for me ; — I laugh at show. 

Contentment. 

[13] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>jC7K>j< '/^y^ ViK >;^>|ir yi< >j*c yj*c yj^ >j>c>;^>?^ >?< >j< >j^ 

January Twenty-second 

Tlie woman a man loves is always his own 
daughter, far more his daughter than the fe- 
male children born to him by the common law 
of life. It is not the outside woman, who takes 
his name, that he loves ; before her image has 
reached the center of his consciousness, it has 
passed through fifty many-layered nerve-strain- 
ers, been churned over by ten thousand pulse- 
beats, and reacted upon by millions of lateral im- 
pulses which bandy it about through the mental 
spaces as a reflection is sent back and forth in a 
saloon lined with mirrors. With this altered 
image of the women before him, his pre-exist- 
ing ideal becomes blended. The object of his 
love is in part the offspring of her legal parents, 
but more of her lover's brain, Elsie Vernier. 

January Twenty-third 

To brag little, — to show well, — to crow 
gently, if in luck, — to pay up, to own up, and 
to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sport- 
ins man. The Autocrat. 

January Twenty-fourth 

A great cause makes great souls, or reveals 
them to themselves. TJic Guardian Angel. 

[14] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yfK yyiryiv yjv wv viv >tv >t«c >;«c>jv >;< >^: >?^>jv >i»cv]>c vj«c vj>k 

January Twenty-fifth 

Certificates are, for the most part, like os- 
trich eggs : the giver never knows what is 
hatched out of them. But once in a thousand 
times they act as curses are said to, — come 
home to roost. Give them often enough, until 
it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some 
day or other, you will get caught warranting 
somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or 
somebody's razors to be safe in the hands of 
the youngest children. Elsie Venner 

January Twenty-sixth 

Think not too meanly of thy low estate ; 
Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create! 

Urania. 

January Twenty-seventh 

The hardest duty bravely performed soon be- 
comes a habit, and tends in due time to trans- 
form itself into a pleasure. Elsie Vermer. 

January Twenty-eighth 

No stranger can get a great many notes of 
torture out of a human soul; it takes one that 
knows it well, — parent, child, brother, sister, 
intimate. The Autocrat. 

[15] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>?«( >j< yi< >i»c viv vis wv vix xjx viv >?«c >?«k >?»c >i«c v?«k vi«j yiv viv 

January Twenty-ninth 

The narrow moments fit like Sunday shoes, 
How vast the heap, how quickly must we choose ; 
A few small scraps from out liis mountain mass 
We snatch in haste, and let the vagrant pass. 

TerpsicJiore. 

January Thirtieth 

Can any man look round and see what Chris- 
tian countries are now doing, and how they are 
governed, and what is the general condition of 
society, without seeing that Christianity is the 
flag under which the world sails, and not the 
rudder that steers its course? 

The Professor. 



January Thirty-first 

Yes, dear departed, cherished days. 

Could Memory's hand restore 
Your morning light, your evening rays. 

From Time's gray urn once more, — 
Then might this restless heart be still. 

This straining eye might close. 
And Hope her fainting pinions fold, 

While the fair phantoms rose. 

Departed Days. 

[16] 



FROINI DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



FEBRUARY 



February First 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unrest- 

° ' The Chambered Nautilus. 

February Second 

There is one disadvantage which the man of 
philosophical habits of mind suffers, as com- 
pared with the man of action. While he is tak- 
ing an enlarged and rational view of the matter 
before him, he lets his chance slip through his 

° ' The Professor, 

February Third 

Conscience itself requires a conscience, or 
nothing can be more unscrupulous. 

Elsie Vernier. 

[17] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

'/i< >?< viK >jv >?v vjv viv y(v yjy yjv v^c v^ >jv v?^ >j< >jx- >?< >k 

February Fourth 

For that great procession of the unloved, 
there is no depth of tenderness in my nature 
that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, — some- 
where, — love is in store for them, — the universe 
must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. 

The Autocrat. 

February Fifth 

Love works vcr^^ strange transformations in 
young women. Sometimes it leads them to try 
every mode of adding to their attractions, — 
their whole thought is how to be most lovely in 
the eyes thoy would fill so as to keep out all other 
images. Poor darlings ! We smile at their lit- 
tle vanities, as if they were very trivial things; 
but Nature knows what she is about. 

The Guardian Angel. 

February Sixth 

The more wheels there are in a watch or a 
brain, the more trouble they are to take care of. 

The Autocrat. 

February Seventh 
Put not your trust in money, but put your 
money in trust. The Autocrat. 

[18] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

■??ir>?^^iv viv y^y v;v y^ y^ >^-7J? y^; yfvv;< >jv vj*; >jv vj^- >j<- 

February Eighth 

Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the 
water, in the swell of the Chelsea ferry-boats, 
in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in 
which I love to let the great mother rock me, 
I have seen a tall ship glide by against the tide, 
as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, with a 
hundred strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung 
unfilled, her streamers were drooping, she had 
neither side-wheel nor stern-wheel; still she 
moved on, stately, in serene triumph, as if with 
her own life. But I knew that on the other side 
of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk that 
swam so majestically, there was a little toiling 
steam-tug, with heart of fire and arms of iron, 
that was hugging it close, and dragging it 
bravely on ; and I knew that, if the little steam- 
tug untwined her arms and left the tall ship, it 
would wallow and roll about, and drift hither 
and thither, and go off with the refluent tide no 
man knows whither. And so I have known more 
than one genius, high-decked, full-freighted, 
wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare 
toihng arms, and brave, warm, beating heart 
of the faithful little wife, that dragged him on 
against all the tide of circumstance, would soon 
have gone down the stream and been heard of 
no more. The Professor. 

[19] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLINIES 

February Ninth 

There are those who hold the opinion that 
truth is only safe when diluted — about one-fifth 
to four-fifths lies — as the oxygen of the air is 
with its hydrogen. The Guardian Angel. 

February Tenth 

Even in common people, conceit has the virtue 
of making them cheerful ; the man who thinks 
his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, 
and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure 
to be a good-humored person, though liable to 
be tedious at times. The Autocrat. 

February Eleventh 

Handsome hair, eyes, complexion, feature, 
form, hand, foot, pleasant voice, strength, 
grace, agility, intelligence, — how few there are 
that have not just enough of one at least of 
these gifts to show them that the good Mother, 
busy with her millions of children, has not quite 
forgotten them ! The Professor. 

February Twelfth 

Of all liars and false accusers, a sick con- 
science is the most inventive and indefatigable. 

Elsie Venner. 

[20] 



FROiAI DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

February Thirteenth 

Youth fades ; love droops ; the leaves of friend- 
ship fall ; 
A mother's secret hope outlives them all. 

A Mother's Secret. 

February Fourteenth 

The world has a million roosts for a man, but 
only one nest. The Autocrat. 

February Fifteenth 

A real woman does a great many things with- 
out knowing why she does them; but these pat- 
tern machines mix up their intellects with every- 
thing they do, just like men. They can't help 
it, no doubt, but we can't help getting sick of 
them, either. The Professor. 

February Sixteenth 

Love moves in an accelerating ratio ; and 
there comes a time when the progress of the pas- 
sion escapes from all human formulje, and brings 
two young hearts, which had been gradually 
drawing nearer and nearer together, into com- 
plete union, with a suddenness that puts an in- 
finity between the moment when all is told and 
that which went just before. 

The Guardian Angel. 

[21] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
y^yi^n^^r^K >?»c>t»c>l«c>?«c>^yj«k >?<>;< >j<7i«? >j< >?< >j«c >j< 

Februaey Seventeenth 
Truth is touo^h. It will not break, like a 
bubble at a touch ; nay, you may kick it about all 
day, like a football, and it will be round and full 
at evening. Does not Mr. Bryant say that 
Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomo- 
tive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches 
her finger.? I never heard that a mathematician 
was alarmed for the safety of a demonstrated 
proposition. I think, generally, that fear of 
open discussion implies feebleness of inward con- 
viction, and great sensitiveness to the expression 
of individual opinion is a mark of weakness. 

The Professor. 
February Eighteenth 
Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, 
as sailors are hurried on board of vessels, — in 
a state of intoxication. We are hustled into 
maturity reeling with our passions and imagina- 
tions, and we have drifted far away from port 
before we awake out of our illusions. But to 
carry us out of maturity' into old age, without 
our knowing where we are going, she drugs us 
with strong opiates, and so we stagger along 
with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow 
enough has fallen on our heads to rouse our 
comatose brains out of their stupid trances. 

The Autocrat. 

[22] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

February Nineteenth 
No fear lest praise should make us proud ! 

We know how cheaply that is won ; 
The idle homage of the crowd 
Is proof of tasks as idly done. 

Saint Anthony. 

February Twentieth 
She appeared to be thirty-five years old, more 
or less, and looked not badly for that stage of 
youth, though, of course, she might have been 
handsomer at twenty, as is often the case with 
women. The Guardian Angel. 

February Twenty-first 
Consciousness of unquestioned position makes 
people gracious in proper measure to all; but 
if a woman put on airs with her real equals, 
she has something about herself or her family 
she is ashamed of, or ought to be. 

The Autocrat. 

February Twenty-second 
As the Model of all the Virtues is about to 
leave us, I find myself wondering what is the 
reason we are not all very sorry. Surely we 
all like good persons. She is a good person. 
Therefore wc like her. — Only we don't. 

The Professor. 

[23] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

February Twenty-third 

A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates 
us, you may also observe, to that upon which 
we look. Roses redden the cheeks of her who 
stoops to gather them, and buttercups turn little 
people's chins ^-ellow. When we look at a vast 
landscape, our chests expand as if we would en- 
large to fill it. When we examine a minute ob- 
ject, we naturally contract, not only our fore- 
heads, but all our dimensions. If I see two men 
wrestling, I wrestle too, with my limbs and 
features. When a country-fellow comes upon 
the stage, 3'ou will see twenty faces in the boxes 
putting on the bumpkin expression. There is 
no need of multiplying instances to reach this 
generalization ; every person and thing we look 
upon puts its special mark upon us. If this is 
repeated often enough, we get a permanent re- 
semblance to it, or at least a fixed aspect which 
we took from it. Husband and wife come to 
look alike at last, as has often been noticed. 

Tlie Professor. 

February Twenty-fourth 

A young man, using large endowments wisely 
and fortunately, may put himself on a level with 
the highest in the land in ten brilliant years of 
spirited, unflagging labor. Elsie Venner. 

[24] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yfTffiK x^x >iv >jv >iv>i< vj< >^ 5^ vj»c vj< >I< >j^ >j< >j<>;<>K 

February Twenty-fifth 
Every person's feelings have a front-door 
and a side-door by which they may be entered. 
The front-door is on the street. Some keep it 
always open ; some keep it latched ; some, locked ; 
some, bolted, — with a chain that will let you 
peep in, but not get in ; and some nail it up, so 
that nothing can pass its threshold. This front- 
door leads into a passage which opens into an 
ante-room, and this into the interior apartments. 
The side-door opens at once into the sacred 
chambers. 

There is almost always at least one key to 
this side-door. This is carried for years hid- 
den in a mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, 
sisters, and friends, often, but by no means so 
universally, have duplicates of it. The wedding- 
ring conveys a right to one; alas, if none is 
given with it ! The Autocrat. 

February Twenty-sixth 
The two women looked each other in the eyes 
with subtle interchange of intelligence, such as 
belongs to their sex in virtue of its specialty. 
Talk without words is half their conversation, 
just as it is all the conversation of dumb ani- 
mals. Only the dull senses of men are dead to 
it as to the music of the spheres. 

TJic Guardian Angel. 

[25] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLIMES 

Viv viv ViV VIV >|V >?< VJV >?< >?< w TrfiT-vp-?!^-?^ vjvvjv: >JK- /^ 

February Twenty-seventh 
All who have observed much are aware that 
some men, who have seen a great deal of life in 
its less chastened aspects and are anything but 
modest, will blush often and easily, while there 
are delicate and sensitive women who can faint, 
or go into fits, if necessary, but are very rarely 
seen to betray their feelings in their cheeks, 
even when their expression shows that their in- 
most soul is blushing scarlet. Elsie Venner. 

February Twenty-eighth 
If the sense of the ridiculous is one side of 
an impressible nature, it is very well ; but if that 
is all there is in a man, he had better have been 
an ape at once, and so have stood at the head 
of his profession. Laughter and tears are 
meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery 
of sensibility ; one is wind-power, and the other 
water-power; that is all. The Autocrat. 

February Twenty-ninth 
Use well the freedom which thy Master gave, 
(Think'st thou that Heaven can tolerate a 

slave.?) 
And He who made thee to be just and true 
Will bless thee, love thee, — aye, respect thee too ! 

Urania, 

[26] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLIMES 

7?r>?< yiv y^y ^iv >$< >?«c >?>c>?<>j< >t< y?< >j<f >j«c y^y >j<c>j<>k 



MARCH 



March First 

The sunbeams, lost for half a year, 

Slant through my pane their morning rays ; 

For dry Northwesters cold and clear, 
The East blows in its thin blue haze. 

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, 
Then close against the sheltering wall 

The tulip's horn of dusky green. 
The peony's dark unfolding ball. 

The golden-chaliced crocus burns ; 

The long narcissus-blades appear; 
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, 

And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. 

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung 
By the wild winds of gusty March, 

With sallow leaflets lightly strung, 
Are swaying by the tufted larch. 

Spring has Come. 

[27] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

March Second 

When the eyes meet and search each other, It 
is the uncovering of the blanched stem through 
which the whole life runs, but which has never 
taken color or form from the sunlight. 

Elsie Venner. 

March Third 

What a man wants to do, in talking with a 
stranger, is to get and to give as much of the 
best and most real life that belongs to the two 
talkers as the time will let him. Life is short, 
and conversation apt to run to mere words. 

The Professor. 

March Fourth 

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be 
remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who 
are thinking about somctliing else, — very rarely 
to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now, let 
us be a celebrated individual !" The Autocrat. 

March Fifth 

Where go the poet's lines? — 

Answer, ye evening tapers ! 
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, 

Speak from your folded papers ! 

The Poefs Lot. 

[28] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

x^y xiv xiv >4V viv Viv Hv y|< viv V|«c vt< >;< vtoiv y^y y^v ^v >j< 

March Sixth 

The average intellect of five hundred persons, 
taken as they come, is not very high. It may 
be sound and safe, so far as it goes, but it is 
not very rapid or profound. The Autocrat. 

March Seventh 

Love shuts itself up in sympathy like a knife- 
blade in its handle, and opens as easily. 

The Guardian Angel. 

March Eighth 

Beliefs must be lived in for a good while, 
before they accommodate themselves to the soul's 
wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable. 

Elsie Vernier. 

March Ninth 

In choosing your clergyman, other things be- 
ing equal, prefer the one of a wholesome and 
cheerful habit of mind and bod}^ If you can 
get along with people who carry a certificate in 
their faces that their goodness is so great as to 
make them very miserable, your children can- 
not. And whatever offends one of these little 
ones, cannot be right in the eyes of Him Who 
loved them so well. The Professor. 

[29] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLINIES 

y^r^fKiffs: >?< vjvvjv hv hv y*v >iv >iv viv v^v yf^yj^ >?^ >?< >?^ 

March Tenth 

The miserable routinists who keep repeating 
invidiously Cowper's "God made the country 
and man made the town," as if the town were 
a place to kill the race in, do not know what 
they are talking about. Is the dark and damp 
cavern where a ragged beggar hides Iiimself 
better than a town-mansion which fronts the 
sunshine and backs on its own shadow? God 
made the cavern and man made the house ! 
What then? Elsie Venner. 

March Eleventh 

Don't you know how hard it is for some peo- 
ple to get out of a room after their visit is 
really over? They want to be off, and you want 
to have them off, but they don't know how to 
manage it. One would think they had been 
built in your parlor or study, and were waiting 
to be launched. The Autocrat. 

March Twelfth 

I have often observed that vulgar persons, 
and public audiences of inferior collective in- 
telligence, have this in common: the least thing 
draws off their minds when you are speaking to 
them. The Professor. 

[30] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

x*x x^x x^x xix yjy >tv yjv i^T^-^ vj< 1^ >?*^>ys:7p-?jirsjr7^ 

March Thirteenth 

An overworked woman is always a sad sight, 
sadder a great deal than an overworked man, 
because she is so much more fertile in capacities 
of suffering than a man. Elsie Venner. 

March Fourteenth 

I would have a woman as true as Death. At 
the first real lie which works from the heart out- 
ward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into 
a better world, where she can have an angel for 
a governess, and feed on strange fruits which 
will make her all over again, even to her bones 
and marrow. The Autocrat. 

March Fifteenth 

A young fellow, born of good stock, in one 
of the more thoroughly civilized portions of 
these United States of America, bred in good 
principles, inheriting a social position wliich 
makes him at his ease everywhere, means suffi- 
cient to educate him thoroughly without taking 
away the stimulus to vigorous exertion, and with 
a good opening in some honorable path of labor, 
is the finest sight our private satellite has had 
the opportunity of inspecting on the planet to 
which she belongs. The Professor. 

[31] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>j< >j<^>j< >?<>?< 71^7?^ >??7j^>j»r>;<>j<>j^>j<>jvvj<>j<>K 

March Sixteenth 

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle 
which fits them all. The Autocrat. 

March Seventeenth 

I find that there is a very prevalent opinion 
among the dwellers on the shores of Sir Isaac 
Newton's Ocean of Truth, that salt fish, which 
have been taken from it a good while ago, split 
open, cured, and dried, are the only proper and 
allowable food for reasonable people. I main- 
tain, on the otlier hand, that there are a number 
of live fish still swimming in it, and that every 
one of us has a right to see if he cannot catch 
some of them. Sometimes I please myself with 
the idea that I have landed an actual living fish, 
small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and silvery 
scales. Then I find the consumers of nothing 
but the salted and dried article insist that it is 
poisonous, simply because it is alive, and cry out 
to people not to touch it. I have not found, 
however, that people mind them much. 

The Professor. 

March Eighteenth 

The best thought, like the most perfect diges- 
tion, is done unconsciously. 

The Guardian Angel. 

[32] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

X4X Xi^Ky^y^Ky^ x;x y|x x^V y^ y^ >♦< 7?i"^y>iy xix 4 V y^y yt^ 

March Nineteenth 

Don't flatter yourselves that friendship au- 
thorizes jou to say disagreeable things to your 
intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you 
come into relation with a person, the more 
necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except 
in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your 
friend to learn unpleasant truths from his ene- 
mies ; they are ready enough to tell them. 
Good-breeding never forgets that amour-propre 
is universal. The Autocrat. 

March Twentieth 

Every event that a man would master must 
be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught 
the reins of a thought except as it galloped by 
him. The Professor. 

March Twenty-first 

It is well that young persons cannot read the 
fatal oracles of Nature. Blind impulse is her 
highest wisdom, after all. We make our great 
jump, and then she takes the bandage off our 
eyes. That is the way the broad sea-level of 
average is maintained, and the physiological 
democracy is enabled to fight against the prin- 
ciple of selection which would disinherit all the 
weaker children. Elsie Venner. 

[33] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

March Twenty-second 

Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms 
Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms ; 
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen, 
The southern slopes are fringed with tender 

green ; 
On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves, 
Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing 

leaves, 
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won. 
White, azure, golden, — drift, or sky, or sun ; — 
The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast 
The frozen trophy torn from winter's crest; 
The violet, gazing on the arch of blue 
Till her own iris wears its deepened hue; 
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the 

mould. Astrcea. 

March Twenty-third 

By every hill whose stately pines 

Wave their dark arms above 
The home where some fair being shines. 

To warm the wilds with love, 
From barest rock to bleakest shore 

Where farthest sail unfurls. 
That stars and stripes are streaming o'er, — 

God bless our Yankee girls ! 

Our Yankee Girls, 

[34] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

March Twenty-fourth 

He had a good deal in him of what he used 
to call the Old Man, which, as he confessed, he 
had never succeeded in putting off, — meaning 
thereby certain qualities belonging to humanity, 
as much as the natural gifts of the dumb crea- 
tures belong to them, and tending to make a 
man beloved by his weak and erring fellow- 
inortals. The Guardian Angel. 

March Twenty-fifth 

Every word we speak is the medal of a dead 
thought or feeling, struck in the die of human 
experience, worn smooth by innumerable con- 
tacts, and always transferred warm from one 
to another. Elsie Venner. 

March Twenty-sixth 

Facts always yield the place of honor in con- 
versation to thoughts about facts. 

The Autocrat. 

March Twenty-seventh 

The real religion of the world comes from 
women much more than from men — from 
mothers most of all, who carry the key of our 
souls in their bosoms. The Professor. 

[35] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

March Twenty-eighth 

Habit Is the approximation of the animal sys- 
tem to the orfranlc. It Is a confession of failure 
in the highest function of being, wliich involves 
a perpetual self-determination, in full view of 
all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, 
is an action in present circumstances from past 
motives. It Is substituting a vis a tergo for the 
evolution of living force. The Professor. 

March Twenty-ninth 

'TIs but the fool that loves excess ; — hast thou 

a drunken so\i\? 
Thy bane Is in thy shallow skull, not in my 

silver bowl! On Lending a Punch-Bowl. 

March Thirtieth 

You never need think 3'ou can turn over any 
old falsehood without a terrible squirming and 
scattering of the horrid Uttle population that 
dwells under it. The Autocrat. 

March Thirty-first 

The recollection of a deep and true affection 
is rather a divine nourishment for a life to grow 
strong upon than a poison to destroy it. 

Elsie Venner. 

[36] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



APRIL 

April First 

I hear the whispering voice of Spring, 
The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry. 

Like some poor bird with prisoned wing 
That sits and sings, but longs to flj. 

O for one spot of living green, — 

One little spot where leaves can grow, — 

To love unblamed, to walk unseen. 
To dream above, to sleep below! 

Spring has Come. 



April Second 

The opinions of relatives as to a man's 
powers are very commonly of Httle value; not 
merely because they sometimes overrate their 
own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on 
the contrary, they are quite as likely to under- 
rate those whom they have grown into the habit 
of considering like themselves. 

The Autocrat. 

[37] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April Third 

There are no better maxims for ladies who 
give tea-parties than these: Cream is thicker 
tlian water. Large heart never loved little 
cream-pot. Elsie Venner. 

April Fourth 

The brain is the palest of all the internal 
organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever 
comes from the brain carries the hue of the 
place it came from, and whatever comes from the 
heart carries the heat and color of its birth- 
place. The Professor. 

April Fifth 

If a man really loves a woman, of course he 
wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were 
not quite sure that he was the best person she 
could by any possibility marry. The Autocrat. 

April Sixth 

How patient Nature smiles at Fame! 

The weeds, that strewed the victor's way, 
Feed on his dust to shroud his name. 

Green where his proudest towers decay. 

A Roman Aqueduct. 

[88] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April Seventh 

To know whether a minister, young or still 
in flower, is in safe or dangerous paths, there 
are two psychometers. The first is the black 
broadcloth forming the knees of his pantaloons ; 
the second, the patch of carpet before his mir- 
ror. If the first is unworn and the second is 
frayed and threadbare, pray for him. If the 
first is worn and shiny, while the second keeps 
its pattern and texture, get him to pray for 
you. The Guardian Angel. 

April Eighth 

A portrait is apt to be a surprise to us. The 
artist looks onl}'^ from without. He sees us, too, 
with a hundred aspects on our faces we are never 
likely to see. No genuine expression can be 
studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass. 

The Professor. 

April Ninth 

When one of us who has been led by native 
vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or 
herself possessed of talent arrives at the full 
and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, 
it is one of the most tranquilizing and blessed 
convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. 

The Autocrat. 

[39] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April Tenth 

No, my friends, I go (always, other things 
being equal) for the man that inherits family 
traditions and the cumulative humanities of at 
least four or five generations. Above all things, 
as a child, he should have tumbled about in a 
hbrary. All men are afraid of books, that have 
not handled them from infancy. The Autocrat. 

April Eleventh 

Whatever may be the cause, it is well known 
that the announcement at any private rural 
entertainment that there Is to be ice cream pro- 
duces an immediate and profound Impression. 
It may be remarked, as aiding this impression, 
that exaggerated ideas prevail as to the danger- 
ous effects this congealed food may produce on 
persons not in the most robust health. 

Elsie Vermer. 

Apbil Twelfth 

There is nothing earthly that lasts so well, 
on the whole, as money. A man's learning dies 
with him; even his virtues fade out of remem- 
brance ; but the dividends on tlic stocks he be- 
queaths to his children live and keep his memory 
green. The Professor, 

[40] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April Thirteenth 

. . . The green earth, beneath the zephyr's 

wing, 
Wears on her breast the varnished buds of 

Spring, 
When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil, 
Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil; 
When the young hyacinth returns to seek 
The air and sunshine with her emerald beak ; 
When the light snowdrops, starting from their 

cells, 
Ilang each pagoda with its silver bells ; 
When the frail willow twines her trailing bow 
With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below; 
When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain. 
Whose circling shadow speaks a century's reign, 
Wreathes in the clouds her regal diadem, — 
A forest waving on a single stem. 

Poetry: A Metrical Essay. 

April Fourteenth 

These beauties that grow and ripen against 
the city walls, these young fellows with cheeks 
like peaches and young girls with cheeks like 
nectarines, show that the most perfect forms of 
artificial life can do as much for the human 
product as garden-culture for strawberries and 
blackberries. Elsie Venner, 

[41] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April Fifteenth 

There must be other things besides aerolites 
that wander from their own spheres to ours ; 
and when we speak of celestial sweetness or 
beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than 
we dream. The Autocrat. 

April Sixteenth 

At a certain period of life, say from fifty to 
sixty and upward, the grand-^nicrnfA instinct 
awakens in bachelors, the rhythms of Nature 
reaching them in spite of her defeated inten- 
tions ; so that when they marry late they love 
their autumn child with a twofold affection, — 
father's and grandfather's both in one. 

The Guardian Angel. 

April Seventeenth 

A little clear perfection, undiluted with hu- 
man weakness, goes a great way. 

The Professor. 

April Eighteenth 

There is no galvanism in kiss-3'our-brother ; 
it is copper against copper ; but alien bloods 
develop strange currents, when they flow close 
to each other, with onl}^ the films that cover 
lip and check between them. Elsie Venner. 

[42] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April, Nineteenth 

A woman who does not carry a halo of good 
feeling and desire to make everybody about con- 
tented with her wherever she goes, — an atmos- 
phere of grace, mercy, and peace, of at least 
six feet radius, which wraps every human being 
upon whom she voluntarily bestows her presence, 
and so flatters him with the comfortable thought 
that she is rather glad he is alive than other- 
wise, isn't worth the trouble of talking to, as a 
•woman; she may do well enough to hold dis- 
cussions with. The Professor. 

April Twentieth 

Where there is one man who squints with his 
eyes, there are a dozen who squint with their 
brains. It is an infirmity in the eyes, making 
the two unequal in power, that makes men 
squint. Just so is it an inequality in the two 
halves of the brain that makes some men idiots 
and others rascals. The Guardian Angel, 

April Twenty-first 

A hat which has been popped, or exploded by 
being sat down upon, is never itself again after- 
wards. It is a favorite illusion of sanguine 
natures to believe the contrary. The Autocrat. 

[43] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
T^y^KyfKyfK'j^yfiViK viw^v vjvvj^ vjvvk >;^>|<>?<">??7K 

April Twenty-second 

The spiritual standard of different classes I 
would reckon thus: — 1. The comfortably rich. 
2. The decently comfortable. 3. The very rich, 
who are apt to be irreligious. 4. The very 
poor, who are apt to be immoral. 

The Professor. 

April Twenty-third 

Beware of making your moral staple consist 
of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, 
and teach others to abstain, from all that is sin- 
ful or hurtful. But making a business of it 
leads to emaciation of character, unless one 
feeds largely .also on tlic more nutritious diet 
of active sympathetic benevolence. 

The Autocrat. 

April Twenty-fourth 

People, young or old, are wonderfully dif- 
ferent, if we contrast extremes in pairs. They 
approach much nearer, if we take them in 
groups of twenty. Take two hundred as they 
come, without choosing, and you get the gamut 
of human character in both so completely that 
you strike many chords in each which shall be 
in perfect unison with corresponding ones in 
the other. Elsie Vernier. 

[4i] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yfTf^ /jy /tK y^v viv v{v yi< vj< y^f >i< -^ y;< '/iKy$Kyfry$Kyp: 

April Twenty-fifth 

The elms have robed their slender spray 
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; 

Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 

See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 
That flames in glory for an hour, — 

Behold it withering, — then look up, — 
How meek the forest-monarch's flower ! — 

When wake the violets, Winter dies ; 

When sprout the elm-buds. Spring is near ; 
When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, 

"Bud, little roses ! Spring is here !" 

Spring has Come. 

April Twenty-sixth 

Every real thought on every real subject 
knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As 
soon as his breath comes back, he very prob- 
ably begins to expend it in hard words. 

The Autocrat. 

April Twenty-seventh 

Do you know the pathos there is in the eyes 
of unsought women, oppressed with the burden 
of an inner life unshared.'' Elsie Venner. 

[45] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

April Twenty-eighth 

Once more the pulse of Nature glows 
With faster throb and fresher fire, 

While music round her pathway' flows 
Like echoes from a hidden lyre. 

And is there none with me to share 
The glories of the earth and sky? 

The eagle through the pathless air 
Is followed b}^ one burning eye. 

From a Bachelor's Journal. 

April Twenty-ninth 

The heart makes the theologian. Every race, 
every civilization, either has a new revelation 
of its own or a new interpretation of an old one. 
Democratic America has a different humanity 
from feudal Europe, and so must have a new 
divinity. The Professor. 

April Thirtieth 

At last young April, ever frail and fair. 
Wooed by her plavmate with the golden hair, 
Chased to the margin of receding floods 
O'er the soft meadows starred with opening 

buds, 
In tears and blushes sighs herself away, 
And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May. 

Astrtra. 

[46] 



FROIVI DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
y^ir^yiK >?< v?«c vt< >jv >j< >j< >j< vj< >^ v;«c v?^ >?< v?v >t< >K 



MAY 



May First 

Look at Nature. She never wearies of saying 
over her floral paternoster. In the crevices of 
C^^clopcan walls, — in the dust where men lie, 
dust also, — on the mounds that bury huge cities, 
the Birs Nimroud and the Babel-heap, — still 
that same sweet prayer and benediction. The 
Amen! of Nature is always a flower. 

The Autocrat. 



May Second 

The windows blush with fresh bouquets, 
Cut with the May-dew on their lips ; 

The radish all its bloom displays. 
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. 

Nor less the flood of light that showers 
On beauty's changed corolla-shades, — 

The walks are gay as bridal bowers 
With rows of many-petalled maids. 

Spring has Come. 

[47] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

jMay Third 

The red heart sends all its instincts up to the 
white brain to be anah'zcd, chilled, blanched, and 
so become pure reason, which is just exactly 
what we do not want of woman as woman. The 
current should run the other wa}'. The nice, 
calm, cold thought, which in women shapes 
itself so rapidly that they hardly know it as 
thought, should always travel to the lips via 
the heart. It does so in those women whom all 
love and admire. 

The Professor. 

INIay Fourth 

When those who parted as children meet as 
man and woman, there is always a renewal of 
that early experience which followed the taste 
of the forbidden fruit, — a natural blush of 
consciousness, not without its charm. 

Elsie Venner. 

May Fifth 

Oh, what are the prizes we perish to win 
To the first little "shiner" we caught with a pin ! 
No soil upon earth is so dear to our eyes 
As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies! 
At the Berkshire Festival. 

[48] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

May Sixth 

Of a hundred people of each of the different 
leading religious sects, about the same propor- 
tion will be safe and pleasant persons to deal 
and to live with. The Professor. 

May Seventh 

The beauty of good breeding is that it ad- 
justs itself to all relations without effort, true 
to itself always, however the manners of those 
around it may change. Elsie Venner. 

]May Eighth 

Easy-crying widows take new husbands soon- 
est ; there is nothing like wet weather for trans- 
planting. The Guardian Angel. 

May Ninth 

All generous minds have a horror of what 
are commonly called "facts." They are the 
brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who 
does not know fellows that always have an ill- 
conditioned fact or two that they lead after 
them into decent company like so many bull- 
dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious 
suggestion, or convenient generalization, or 
pleasant fancy.'' The Autocrat, 

[49] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOOIES 

May Tenth 

Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independ- 
ence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best 
things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble 
voices among us, — I have known families famous 
for them, — but ask the first person you meet r, 
question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, 
metallic, matter-of-business clink in the accents 
of the answer, that produces the effect of one 
of those bells which small trades-people connect 
with their shop-doors, and which spring upon 
your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that 
your first impulse is to retire at once from the 
precincts. The Autocrat. 

May Eleventh 

I sometimes think women have a sixth sense, 
which tells them that others, whom they cannot 
see or hear, are in suffering. The Professor. 

May Twelfth 

Men who see into their neighbors are very apt 
to be contemptuous ; but men who see through 
them find something lying behind every human 
soul which it is not for them to sit in judgment 
on, or to attempt to sneer out of the order of 
God's manifold universe. Elsie Vcnner. 

[50] 



FROIM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

May Thirteenth 

Women are twice as religious as men ; all the 
world knows that. Whether they are any bet- 
ter, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be 
questioned ; for the additional religious element 
supplied by sex hardly seems to be a matter of 
praise or blame. But in all common aspects 
they are so much above us that we get most of 
our religion from them, — from their teachings, 
from their example, — above all, from their pure 
affections. The Professor, 

May Fourteenth 

You think yourself a very fastidious young 
man, my friend; but there are probably at least 
five thousand young women in these United 
States, any one of whom you would certainly 
marry, if you were thrown much in her com- 
pany, and nobody more attractive were near, 
and she had no objection. Elsie Venner^ 

May Fifteenth 

She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, 
as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow 
upon these whom she ought cordially and kindly 
to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes 
not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. 

The Autocrat. 

[51] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

May Sixteenth 

If the Devil could only appear in church by 
attorney, and make the best statement that the 
facts would bear him out in doing on behalf of 
his special virtues (what we commonly call 
vices), the influence of good teachers would be 
much greater than it is. For the arguments by 
Avhich the Devil prevails are precisely the ones 
that the Devil-quelier most rarely answers. 

The Autocrat. 

May Seventeenth 

Nature took him into her confidence. She 
loves the men of science well, and tells them all 
her family secrets, — who is the father of this 
or that member of the group, who is brother, 
sister, cousin, and so on, through all the circle 
of relationship. But there are others to whom 
she tells her dreams; not what species or genus 
her lily belongs to, but what vague thought it 
has when it dresses in white, or what memory of 
its birthplace that is which we call its fra- 
grance. The Guardian Angel. 

May Eighteenth 

What a miserable thing it is to be poor ! 

Elsie Vernier. 

[52] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>^ >?«;: >!«? /.4»i Mi\ xix x^y >j»i: >K W v^c vjk- >;v: >jir7j^-^->j^7|^ 

May Nineteenth 

The apron-strings of an American mother are 
made of india-rubber. Her boy belongs where 
he is wanted. The Professor. 

May Twentieth 

The woods are all alive to one who walks 
through them with his mind in an excited state, 
and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees 
are always talking, not merely whispering with 
their leaves (for every tree talks to itself in that 
way, even when it stands alone in the middle of 
a pasture), but grating their boughs against 
one another, as old, horn-handed farmers press 
their dry, rustling palms together, dropping a 
nut or a leaf or a twig, clicking to the tap of a 
woodpecker, or rustling as a squirrel flashes 
along a branch. Elsie Venner. 

May Twenty-first 

She did not announce any opinion; but she 
made a sound which the books write humph! 
but which real folks make with closed lips, thus : 
m'!, implying that there is a good deal which 
might be said, and all the vocal organs want to 
have a chance at it, if there is to be any talking. 
The Guardian Angel. 

[53] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

May Twexty-second 

I can't help remembering tliat the world's 
great men have not commonly been great 
scholars, nor its great scholars great men. 

The Autocrat. 

May Twexty-tiiikd 

The unbeautiful get many more lovers than 
the beauties; only, as there are more of them, 
their lovers are spread thinner and do not make 
so much show, Elsie Venner. 

May Twenty-fourth 

The man whose opinions are not attacked is 
beneath contempt. The Professor. 

I\Iay Twenty-fifth 

There is no possible success without some op- 
position as a fulcrum: force is always aggres- 
sive, and crowds something or other, if it does 
not hit or trample on it. The Guardian Angel. 

^Iay Twenty-sixth 

I find the great thing in this world is not so 
much where we stand, as in what direction we 
are moving. The Autocrat. 

[54] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

May Twenty-seventh 
I love sweet features ; I will own 

That I should like myself 
To see my portrait on a wall, 

Or bust upon a shelf; 
But nature sometimes makes one up 

Of such sad odds and ends, 
It really might be quite as well 

Hushed up among one's friends ! 

To the Portrait of "^ Ladyr 

May Twenty-eighth 
If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of 
their bodies, — if pangs that waste men to 
shadows and drive them into raving madness or 
moping melancholy, — if assassination and sui- 
cide are dreadful possibilities, then there is al- 
ways- something frightful about a lovely young 
woman. The Autocrat. 

May Twenty-ninth 
The old political wire-pullers never go near 
the man they want to gain, if they can help it; 
they find out who his intimates and managers 
are, and work through them. Always handle 
any positively electrical body, whether it is 
charged with passion or power, with some non- 
conductor between you and it, not with naked 
hands. Elsie Vcnner. 

[55] 



FRO^M DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

May Thirtieth 
Dowdyism Is clearly an expression of Imper- 
fect vitality. The highest fashion is intensely 
alive, not alive necessarily to the truest and best 
things, but with its blood tingling, as it were, 
in all its extremities and to the farthest point 
of its surface, so that the feather in its bonnet 
is as fresh as the crest of a fighting-cock, and 
the rosette on its slipper as clean-cut and pirn- 
pant (pronounce it English fashion, — it is a 
good word) as a dahlia. As a general rule, 
that society where flattery is acted is much more 
agreeable than that where it is spoken. Don't 
you see why? Attention and deference don't re- 
quire you to make fine speeches expressing 3'our 
sense of unworthincss (lies) and returning all 
the compliments paid 3'ou. This is one reason. 

The Professor. 

]\Iay Thirty-first 
Grieve, as thou must, o'er history's reeking 

page ; 
Blush for the wrongs that stain thy happier 

age; 
Strive with the wanderer from the better path, 
Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath ; 
Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall. 
Have thine own faith, — but hope and pray for 

all ! Urania. 

[56] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



JUNE 



June First 

Every sense and faculty was awake to the 
manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of 
that wonderful June night. The stars were 
shining between the tall trees, as if all the jewels 
of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight 
sky. The voices of the wind, as they sighed 
through the pines, seemed like the breath of a 
sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the 
soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like 
the half-articulate whisper of the mother hush- 
ing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken 
it. The Guardian Angel. 



June Second 

The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale, 

When they feel its breath in the summer gale, 

And the tulip curls its leaves in pride, 

And the blue-eyed violet starts aside; 

But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare, 

For what does the honest toadstool care? 

The Toadstool. 

[57] 



■FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

June Third 

It was now the season of singing-birds, and 
the woods were haunted with mysterious, tender 
music. The voices of the birds which love the 
deeper shades of the forest are sadder than those 
of the open fields : these are the nuns that have 
taken the veil, the hermits that have hidden 
themselves away from the world to tell their 
griefs. Elsie Venner. 

June Fourth 

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of 
a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal longer. 

The Professor. 

June Fifth 

Women love the conquering party, — it is the 
way of tlieir sex. TJie Guardian Angel. 

June Sixth 

Your self-made man, whittled into shape with 
his own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that 
is all, than the regular engine-turned article, 
shaped by the most approved pattern, and 
French-polished by society and travel. But as 
to saying that one is every way the equal of the 
other, that is another matter. The Autocrat, 

[58] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yisr^yfi: yf^yf^yiK v?«c v?< i^ >jv y|< vt*. v;^ wn ■/(< yfi. 7*??7?ir 

June Seventh 

Billionism, or even millionlsm, must be a 
blessed kind of state, with health and clear con- 
science and good looks, — but most blessed in 
this, that it takes off all the mean cares which 
give people the three wrinkles between the eye- 
brows, and leaves them free to have a good time 
and make others have a good time, all the way 
along from the charity that tips up unexpected 
loads of wood before widows' houses, and leaves 
foundling turkeys upon poor men's doorsteps, 
and sets lean clergymen crying at the sight of 
anonymous fifty-dollar bills, to the taste which 
orders a perfect banquet in such sweet accord 
with every sense that everybody's nature flowers 
out full-blown in its golden-glowing, fragrant 
atmosphere. Elsie Venner. 

June Eighth 

The whole essence of true gentle-breeding 
(one does not like to say gentilit}') lies in the 
wish and the art to be agreeable. Good-breed- 
ing is Surface-Christianity. Every look, move- 
ment, tone, expression, subject of discourse, 
that may give pain to another is habitually ex- 
cluded from conversational intercourse. This 
is the reason why rich people are apt to be so 
much more agreeable than others. 

The Professor, 

[59] 



FROINI DAY TO DAY WITH HOOIES 
y^Kyi^yt^yfTfi^yii. >;< vii. >tv >j< >!«;: >?ir7?ir>?c7?<r?jir>?^7i? 

June Ninth 
Men is men and gals is gals. I wouldn't 
trust no man, not ef he was much under a hun- 
dred year old, and as for a gal ! 

The Guardian Angel. 

June Tenth 
We must have a weak spot or two in a char- 
acter before we can love it much. People that 
do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything 
than is good for them, or use anything but dic- 
tionary-words, are admirable subjects for bio- 
graphics. But we don't always care most for 
those flat-pattern flowers that press best in the 
herbarium. The Professor. 

June Eleventh 
Remember that Nature makes every man love 
all women, and trusts the trivial matter of spe- 
cial choice to the commonest accident. 

Elsie Venner. 
June Twelfth 
How curious it is that we always consider 
solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises 
and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of 
the future life of those whom we thus deprive 
of half their faculties and then call blessed! 

The Autocrat. 

[60] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

June Thirteenth 

Many a woman rejects a man because he is 
in love with her, and accepts another because 
he is not. The first is thinking too much of him- 
self and his emotions, — the other is making a 
study of her and her friends, and learns what 
ropes to pull. The Guardian Angel. 

June Fourteenth 

Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius 
is glorious ; but a weak flavor of genius in an 
essentially common person is detestable. It 
spoils tlie grand neutrality of a common-place 
character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine- 
glass spoil a draught of fair water. 

The Autocrat. 

June Fifteenth 

I hope I love good men and women ; I know 
that they never speak a word to me, even if it 
be of question or blame, that I do not take 
pleasantly, if it is expressed with a reasonable 
amount of human kindness. The Professor. 

June Sixteenth 

All our other features were made for us ; but 
a man makes his own mouth. Elsie Venner. 

[61] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

June Seventeenth 

There are about as many twins in the births 
of thought as of children. For the first time 
in your hvcs you learn some fact or come across 
some idea. Within an hour, a day, a week, that 
same fact or idea strikes you from another 
quarter. It seems as if it had passed into space 
and bounded back upon you as an echo from the 
blank wall that shuts in the world of thought. 
Yet no connection exists. The Professor. 

June Eighteenth 

Little localized powers, and little narrow 
streaks of specialized knowledge, are things men 
are very apt to be conceited about. Nature is 
very wise ; but for this encouraging principle 
how many small talents and little accomplish- 
ments would be neglected ! Talk about conceit 
as much as you like, it is to human character 
what salt is to the ocean ; it keeps it sweet, and 
renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the 
natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plumage, 
which enables him to shed the rain that falls on 
him and the wave in which he dips. When one 
has had all conceit taken out of him, when he 
has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon 
soak through, and he will fly no more. 

The Autocrat. 

[62] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

June Nineteenth 

Better too few words from the woman we 
love than too many : while she is silent, Nature 
is working for her ; while she talks, she is work- 
ing for herself. Love is sparingly soluble in 
the words of men ; therefore they speak much 
of it ; but one syllable of woman's speech can 
dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold. 

The Autocrat. 

June Twentieth 

A man of sense, — that is, a man who knows 
perfectly well that a cool head is worth a dozen 
warm hearts in carrying the fortress of a 
woman's affections, who knows that men are re- 
jected by women every day because they do not, 
and therefore can study the arts of pleasing, — 
a man of sense, when he finds he has established 
his second parallel too soon, retires quietly to 
his first, and begins working on his covered 
ways again. Elsie Venner. 

June Twenty-first 

Religion and government appear to me the 
two subjects which, of all others, should belong 
to the common talk of people who enjoy the 
blessings of freedom. The Professor, 

[63] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

June Twenty-second 

It is by no means certain that our individual 
personality is the single inhabitant of these our 
corporeal frames. . . . Thus, at one moment 
we detect the look, at another the tone of voice, 
at another the characteristic movement of this 
or that ancestor, in our relations or others. 
There are times when our friends do not act 
like themselves, but apparently in obedience to 
some other law than that of their own proper 
nature. We all do things both awake and asleep 
which surprise us. Perhaps we have cotenants 
in this house we live in. The Guardian Angel. 

June Twenty-third 

If we should compare a young girl's man-as- 
she-thinks-him with a forty-sunimcrcd matron's 
man-as-shc-finds-him, I have my doubts as to 
whether the second would be a facsimile of the 
first in most cases. The Professor. 

June Twenty-fourth 

Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a 
bow-string, — to a woman and it is a harp- 
string. She is vibratile and resonant all over, 
so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of 
the air about her. The Autocrat. 

[6i] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

June Twenty-pifth 

^ I don't know anything sweeter than this leak- 
ing m of Nature through all the cracks in the 
walls and floors of cities. You heap up a million 
tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of 
earth which was green once. The trees look 
down from the hill-sides and ask each other, as 
they stand on tiptoe,-"What are these people 
about .P" And the small herbs at their feet look 
up and whisper back,— "We will go and see » 
bo the small herbs pack themselves up in the 
least possible bundles, and wait until the wind 
steals to them at night and whispers,— "Come 
with me." Then they go softly with it into the 
great city,-one to a cleft in the pavement, one 
to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the 
marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one 
to the grave without a stone where nothing but 
a man is buried,-and there they grow, looking 
doM-,1 on the generations of men from mouldy 
roofs, looking up from between the less-trodden 

ralir'"*'' ^''''^''"^ """* *^"'''"^^' "'°" cemetery- 
^ "^^^' The Autocrat. 

June Twenty-sixth 
Don't believe no wrong of nobody, not till y' 
'""'*• The Guardian Angel 

IQ5^ 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yiK '^ v?«c ys< yi< yi< Viv Viv j^y^yti. >i<c-??^>k >?< '/^ y^y^ 

June Twenty-seventh 

The education of our community to all that 
is beautiful is flowing in mainly through its 
women. Elsie Vcnner. 

June Twenty-eighth 

The physician in the Arabian Nights made 
his patient play at ball with a bat, the hollow 
handle of which contained drugs of marvelous 
efficacy. Whether it was the drugs that made 
the sick man get well, or the exercise, is not of 
so much consequence as the fact that he did at 
any rate get well. The Guardian Angel. 

June Twenty-ninth 

The very aim and end of our institutions is 
just this: that we may think what we like and 
say what we think. The Professor. 

June Thirtieth 

You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one 
arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and 
the other big enough to hold the ocean, water 
would stand at the same height in one as in the 
other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise 
men in the same way, — and the fools know it. 

The Autocrat. 

166^ 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



JULY 



July First 

The woods at first convey the impression of 
profound repose, and yet, if you watch their 
ways with open ear, you find that the hfe which 
is in them is restless and nervous as that of a 
woman : the httle twigs are crossing and twining 
and separating like slender fingers that cannot 
be still ; the stray leaf is to be flattened into its 
place like a truant curl; the limbs sway and 
twist, impatient of their constrained attitude; 
and the rounded masses of fohage swell upward 
and subside with long soft sighs. 

Elsie Vernier. 

July Second 

Relations are apt to hate each other, just 
because they are too much alike. 

Elsie Venner. 

July Third 

The common human qualities are more than 
all exceptional gifts. 

The Guardian Angel. 

[67] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

July Fourth 

I am an American, — and wherever I look up 
and see the stars and stripes overliead, that is 
home to me! 

The Autocrat, 



July Fifth 

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, 
at noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may 
reahze, by a sudden extension in his sphere of 
consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the 
most part. — Do you not remember something 
like this? July, between 1 and 2 p. m., Fahren- 
heit 90 deg., or thereabout. Windows all gap- 
ing, like the mouths of panting dogs. Long, 
stinging cry of a locust comes in from a tree, 
half a mile off; had forgotten there was such 
a tree. Baby's screams from a house several 
blocks distant ; — never knew there were any 
babies in the neighborhood before. Tinman 
pounding something that clatters dreadfully, — 
very distinct but don't remember any tinman's 
shop near by. Horses stamping on pavement 
to get off flies. When you hear these four 
sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. 

The Professor. 

[68] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

July Sixth 

We talk about our free institutions ; they are 
nothing but a coarse outside machinery to se- 
cure the freedom of individual thought. The 
President of the United States is only the en- 
gine-driver of our broad-gauge mail train ; and 
every honest, independent thinker has a seat in 
the first-class cars behind him. The Professor. 

July Seventh 

A young farmer was urged to set out some 
apple-trees. — No, said he, they are too long 
growing, and I don't want to plant for other 
people. The young farmer's father was spoken 
to about it, but he, with better reason, alleged 
that apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting. 
At last some one mentioned it to the old grand- 
father of the young farmer. He had nothing 
else to do, — so he stuck in some trees. He lived 
long enough to drink barrels of cider made from 
the apples that grew on those trees. 

The Autocrat, 

July Eighth 

A person's appetite should be at war with no 
other purse than his own. 

Elsie Venner. 

[69] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

July Ninth 

People that make puns are like wanton boys 
that put coppers on the raih'oad tracks. They 
amuse themselves and other children, but their 
little trick may upset a freight train of conver- 
sation for the sake of a battered witticism. 

The Autocrat. 

July Tenth 

Although in the abstract we all love beauty, 
and although, if we Avere sent naked souls into 
some ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies 
and told to select one to our liking, we should 
each choose a handsome one, and never think of 
the consequences, — it is quite certain that 
beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion as 
well as attraction with it, alike in both sexes. 

Elsie Venner. 

July Eleventh 

Is there not one little drawer in your soul, 
my sweet reader, which no hand but yours has 
ever opened, and which none that have known 
you seem to have suspected? What does it 
hold.'* A sin.'* — I hope not. 

The Professor. 

[70] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

vt^ytKj^vtK yiKyfi. vto;*: >k v^ >?v >;< >tv >?< vjy vjvtj^t?? 

July Twelfth 

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, 
lies very commonly an overestimate of our spe- 
cial individuality, as distinguished from our 
generic humanity. It is just here that the very 
highest society asserts its superior breeding. 
Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, 
you will find more real equality in social inter- 
course than in a country village. 

The Professor. 

July Thirteenth 

The greatest saint may be a sinner that never 
got down to hard pan. The Guardian Angel. 

July Fourteenth 

The soul of a man has a series of concentric 
envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or 
the innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has 
his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then, 
his artificial integuments, with their true skin 
of solid stuflTs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, 
and their variouslj^-tinted pigments. Thirdly, 
his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately 
mansion. And then, the whole visible world, in 
which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside 
wrapper, The Autocrat, 

171] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

July Fifteenth 

Our young men come into active life so early, 
that, if our girls were not educated to something 
beyond mere practical duties, our material pros- 
perity would outstrip our culture; as it often 
does in large places where money is made too 
rapidly. Elsie Vernier. 

July Sixteenth 

It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking 
fellow, so much worse than to inherit a hump- 
back or a couple of club-feet, that I sometimes 
feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if 
I may use this expression, Avith a certain tender- 
ness which we need not waste on noble natures. 
One who is born with such congenital incapacity 
that nothing can make a gentleman of him is 
entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profound- 
est s^^mpathy. But as we cannot help hating 
the sight of these people, just as we do that of 
physical deformities, we gradually eliminate 
them from our society, — we love them, but open 
the window and let them go. The Autocrat. 

July Seventeenth 

With most men life is like backgammon, 
half skill and half luck. The Guardian Angel. 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

July Eighteenth 

O Nature ! bare thy loving breast 
And give thy child one hour of rest, 
One little hour to lie unseen 
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green ! 

So curtained by a singing pine, 

Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, 

Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay 

In sweeter music dies away. Midsummer. 

July Nineteenth 

There are, at least, three real saints among 
the women, to one among the men, in every de- 
nomination. 

The Professor. 

July Twentieth 

Marry a girl while she's in the gristle, and 
you can shape her bones for her. 

The Guardian Angel. 

July Twenty-first 

Ah, it is the pale passions that arc the fiercest, 
— it is the violence of the chill that gives the 
measure of the fever ! 

The Autocrat. 

[73] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

xnK -/^ yfK XIX xitK ypi. vivv^c >jv v;vvj< >?< yiKyf^y^KyiKi^yf^: 

July Twenty-second 
Plain food is quite enough for me; 
Three courses are as good as ten ; — 
If Nature can subsist on three, 

Thank Heaven for three. Amen ! 
I always thought cold victuals nice ; — 
My choice would be vanilla-ice. 

Contentment. 

July Twenty-third 
We very commonly mean by beauty the way 
young girls look when there is nothing to hinder 
their looking the wa}^ Nature meant them to. 

Elsie Vcnner. 

July Twenty-fourth 
Women are apt to love the men who they 
think have the largest capacity of loving. 

The Professor. 

July Twenty-fifth 

The right of strict social discrimination of 
all things and persons, according to their 
merits, native or acquired, is one of the most 
precious republican privileges. I take the liberty 
to exercise it when I say that, other things be- 
ing- equal, in most relations of life I prefer a 
man of family. The Autocrat. 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

July Twenty-sixth 

Who knows it not, — this dead recoil 
Of weary fibers stretched with toil ; 
The pulse that flutters faint and low 
When Summer's seething breezes blow? 

Midsummer. 

July Twenty-seventh 

It ain't everybody that can ride to heaven in 
a C-spring shay ; and life's a road that's got a 
good many thank-you-ma'ams to go bumpin' 
over. The Guardian Angel. 

July Twenty-eighth 

Talk about it as much as you like, — one's 
breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his 
religion. A man should be a gentleman in his 
hymns and prayers. The Autocrat. 

July Twenty-ninth 

What I can't stand is the sight of these poor, 
patient, toiling women, who never find out in 
this life how good they are, and never know 
what it is to be told they are angels while they 
still wear the pleasing incumbrances of human- 
ity. Elsie Venner. 

[75] 



FRO]\I DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>?v >;< >j< v?v viv vj«c>tv: >j< y^ya >;^ >j«^ vjo^ojif w yfm^ 

July Thirtieth 

Nothing is better known than the distinction 
of social ranks which exists in every community, 
and nothing is harder to define. The great gen- 
tlemen and ladies of a place are its real lords and 
masters and mistresses ; they are the quality, 
whether in a monarchy or a republic ; mayors 
and governors and generals and senators and 
ex-presidents arc nothing to them. How well 
we know this, and how seldom it finds a distinct 
expression ! The Professor. 

July Thirty-first 

Nature is liberal to her inmost soul, 

She loves alike the tropic and the pole. 

The storm's wild anthem, and the sunshine's 

calm, 
The arctic fungus, and the desert palm; 
Loves them alike, and wills that each maintain 
Its destined share of her divided reign ; 
No creeping moss refuse her crystal gem. 
No soaring pine her cloudy diadem ! Astrcea. 



[76] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



AUGUST 



August First 

Look at the flower of a morning-glory the 
evening before the dawn which is to see it un- 
fold. The delicate petals are twisted in a spiral, 
which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight 
touches the hidden springs of its life, will un- 
coil itself and let the day into the chamber of 
its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by 
its own law, and the hand that shall try to 
hasten the process will only spoil the blossom. 

The Guardian Angel. 



August Second 

I love to hear thine earnest voice, 

Wherever thou art hid. 
Thou testy little dogmatist, 

Thou pretty Katydid! 
Thou 'mindcst me of gentlefolks, — 

Old gentlefolks are tlicy, — 
Thou say'st an undisputed thing 

In such a solemn way. 

To an Insect. 
[77] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
yi< y^ >?< vpi vfi. yi< viv v^v yp^y^'j^yiayvK yi\ >?»( 7^ >?<:■??«? 

August Third 

A mean man never agrees to an^'thing with- 
out deliberately turning it over, so that he may 
see its dirty side, and, if he can, sweating the 
coin he pays for it. If an archangel should 
offer to save his soul for sixpence, he would try 
to find a sixpence with a hole in it. 

Elsie Vernier. 

August Fourth 

It is not our beliefs that frighten us half so 
much as our fancies. The Professor. 

August Fifth 

A man is always pleased to have his most 
serious efforts praised, and the highest aspect 
of his nature get the most sunshine. 

The Autocrat. 

August Sixth 

Wear seemly gloves ; not black, nor yet too 

light, 
And least of all the pair that once was white; 
Let the dead party where you told your loves 
Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves ; 
Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids. 
But be a parent, — don't neglect your kids. 

Urania. 

[78] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>t<^ >t< >t< >^- v?< >j< >?<>;< >t< >?v >;v >j»c v;v >iv >?< >j<^ 7^ >jir 

August Seventh 

There are a great many more clouds than 
rains, and more rains than strokes of lightning, 
and more strokes of lightning than there are 
people killed. Elsie Venner. 

August Eighth 

The world is always ready to receive talent 
with open arms. Very often it does not know 
what to do with genius. Talent is a docile 
creature. It bows its head meekly while the 
world slips the collar over it. It backs into 
the shafts like a lamb. It draws its load cheer- 
fully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. 
But genius is always impatient of its harness ; 
its wild blood makes it hard to train. 

The Autocrat. 

August Ninth 

Life is like that, one stitch at a time, taken 
patiently, and the pattern will come out all 
right, like the embroidery. 

The Guardian Angel. 

August Tenth 

A lame man's opinion of dancing is not good 
for much. The Professor. 

[79] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>j< wiKi^y^ Mfi. yfi. yfi. )^ >K>^' ytf >j^"??r7?ir7ic7i?7K>?>r 

August Eleventh 

I love the damask rose best of all. The 
flowers our mothers and sisters used to love and 
cherish, those which grow beneath our eaves and 
by our doorstep, are the ones we always love 
best. The Autocrat. 

August Twelfth 

We often move to the objects of supreme curi- 
osity, not in the lines of castle and bishop on 
the chess-board, but with the knight's zigzag, 
making believe to ourselves that we are not after 
the thing coveted. The Guardian Angel. 

August Thirteenth 

The arguments which the greatest of our 
schoolmen could not refute were two: the blood 
in men's veins, and the milk in women's breasts. 

The Professor. 

August Fourteenth 

The virtue of the world is not mainly in its 
leaders. In the midst of the multitnjde which 
follows there is often something better than in 
the one that goes before. Elsie Venner, 

[80] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
y^ Viv Viv viKyp: '/;< •;^< vj< y^yii:yiKyfKKp:w:y$i:y^y;i:y(^ 

August Fifteenth 

Some people think that gold and truth are 
alwaj's to be Avashcd for ; but the wiser sort are 
of opinion that, unless there are so many grains 
to the peck of sand or nonsense respectively, it 
does not pay to wash for cither, so long as one 
can find anything else to do. Elsie Vermer. 

August Sixteenth 

But, O my friend ! my favorite fellow-man ! 
If Nature made you on her modern plan, 
Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare, — 
The fruit of Eden ripening in the air, — 
With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin. 
Wear standing collars, were they made of tin ! 
And have a neck-cloth — by the throat of Jove! 
Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove ! 

Urania. 
August Seventeenth 

Put an idea into your intelligence and leave 
it there an hour, a day, a year, without ever 
having occasion to refer to it. When, at last, 
you return to it, you do not find it as it was 
when acquired. It has domiciliated itself, so to 
speak, — become at home, — and integrated itself 
with the whole fabric of the mind. 

The Autocrat. 

181] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

August Eighteenth 

Among the visible objects which hint to us 
fragments of this infinite secret for which our 
souls are waiting, the faces of women are those 
that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the 
great mystery. There are women's faces, some 
real, some ideal, which contain something in 
them that becomes a positive element in our 
creed, so direct and palpable a revelation is it 
of the infinite purity and love. The Professor. 

August Nineteenth 

It is not in the words others say to us, but 
in those other words which these make us say 
to ourselves, that we find our gravest lessons 
and our sharpest rebukes. 

The Guardian Angel. 

August Twentieth 

Father of all ! in Death's relentless claim 
We read Thy mercy by its sterner name; 
In the bright flower that decks the solemn bier, 
We see Thy glory in its narrowed sphere; 
In the deep lessons that affliction draws. 
We trace the curves of Thy encircling laws ; 
In the long sigh that sets our spirits free, 
We own the love that calls us back to Thee ! 

Pittsfleld Cemetery » 

[82] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

August Twenty-first 

We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, 
grinding over the same thoughts, — the gravel 
of the soul's highway, — now and then jarred 
against an obstacle Ave cannot crush, but must 
ride over or around as we best may, sometimes 
bringing short up against a disappointment, 
but still working along with the creaking and 
rattling and grating and jerking that belong to 
the journey of life, even in the smoothest-roll- 
ing vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep under- 
ground reverberation that reveals the unsus- 
pected depth of some abyss of thought or pas- 
sion beneath us. The Professor. 

August Twenty-second 

"Some things can be done as well as others." 
A homely utterance, but it has virtue to over- 
throw all dynasties and hierarchies. These were 
all built up on the Old-World dogma that some 
things can not be done as well as others. 

The Guardian Angel. 

August Twenty-third 

The man zmth a future has almost of necessity 
sense enough to see that any odious trick of 
speech or manners must be got rid of. 

The Autocrat. 

[83] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

August Twenty-fourth 
Getting married is jumping overboard, any 
way you look at it, and if you must save some 
woman from drowning an old maid, try to find 
one zvith a cork jacket, or she'll carry you down 
with her. The Guardian Angel. 

August Twenty-fifth 
If we compare the population of two villages 
of the same race and region, there is such a 
regularly graduated distribution and parallel- 
ism of character, that it seems as if Nature 
must turn out human beings in sets like chess- 
men. Elsie Vermer. 

August Twenty-sixth 
It is the folly of the world constantly which 
confounds its wisdom. Not only out of the 
mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the 
mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get 
our truest lessons. For the fool's judgment is 
a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the 
cheat watches the clouds and sets his weather- 
cock by them, — so that one shall often see by 
their pointing which way the winds of heaven 
are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and 
feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom 
are turning to all points of the compass. 

The Professor. 



I 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

Mi< /^x MiK y/fK viv viv Hv v^x wiKyiKyiKy^yiK -j^ vt^ -^niKyfi: 

August Twenty-seventh 

Everybody likes and respects self-made men. 
It is a great deal better to be made in that way 
than not to be made at all. Are any of you 
younger people old enough to remember that 
Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridge- 
port, which house he built from drain to chim- 
ney-top with his own hands? It took him a 
good many years to build it, and one could see 
that it was a little out of plumb, and a little 
wavy in outline, and a httle queer and uncertain 
in general aspect. A regular hand could cer- 
tainly have built a better house; but it was a 
very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's 
house, and people praised it, and said how re- 
markably well the Irishman had succeeded. 
They never thought of praising the fine blocks 
of houses a little farther on. The Autocrat. 

August Twenty-eighth 

Wherever two natures have a great deal in 
common, the conditions of a first-rate quarrel 
are furnished ready-made. Elsie Venner. 

August Twenty-ninth 

Humility is the first of the virtues — for other 
people. The Professor. 

185] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
1^ ytK^i^ wiK viv >?»; viv vjvw >?vvj< >?<>?< >j«r w:sic>??->k 

August Thirtieth 

You talk of the fire of genius. Many a 
blessed woman, who dies unsung and unremem- 
bered, has given out more of the real vital heat 
that keeps the life in human souls, without a 
spark flitting through her humble chimney to 
tell the world about it, than would set a dozen 
theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, 
in the brains of so many men of genius. 

The Professor. 

August Thirty-first 

Leave what you've done for what you have to 

do; 
Don't be "consistent," but be simply true. 
Don't catch the fidgets ; you have found your 

place 
Just in the focus of a nervous race, 
Fretful to change, and rabid to discuss, 
Full of excitements, always in a fuss ; — 
Think of the patriarchs ; then compare as men 
These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and 

pen! 
Run, if you like, but trj^ to keep your breath; 
Work like a man, but don't be worked to death; 
And with new notions, — let me change the rule, 
Don't strike the iron till it's slightly cool. 

Urania. 

[86] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



SEPTEMBER 



September First 

Though from the Hero's bleeding breast 

Her pulses Freedom drew, 
Though the white lilies in her crest 

Sprang from that scarlet dew, — 

While Valor's haughty champions wait 

Till all their scars are shown, 
Love walks unchallenged through the gate, 

To sit beside the Throne! 

The Two Armies. 

September Second 

People are always glad to get hold of any- 
thing which limits their responsibility. 

Elsie Venner. 

September Third 

You may teach a quadruped to walk on his 
hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all- 
fours. The Professor. 

[87] 



frojm day to day with holmes 

September Fourth 

I'm not a cliicken ; I have seen 

Full many a chill September, 
And though I was a youngster then, 

That gale I well remember ; 
The day before, my kite-string snapped, 

And I, my kite pursuing, 
The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat ; — 

For me two storms were brewing! 

The September Gale. 

September Fifth 

Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser 
fact in favor of a greater. A little mind often 
sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief, of 
a large one. The Professor. 

September Sixth 

The seed that wasteful Autumn cast 
To waver on its stormy blast, 
Long o'er the wintry desert tost, 
Its living germ has never lost ; 
Dropped by the weary tempest's wing, 
It feels the kindling ray of Spring, 
And starting from its dream of death, 
Pours on the air its perfumed breath. 

To an English Friend. 

[88] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>?<>?<? vi< vj< vjiT vjv >j< >?<->;<f >j< W >j>f vi>c y^ viv 'j^yiKyp: 

September Seventh 
Do you know that every man has a religious 
belief peculiar to himself? Smith is always a 
Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth 
of knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, 
of divinity. And Brown has from time imme- 
morial been trying to burn him, to excommuni- 
cate him, to anonymous-article him, because he 
did not take in Brown's-worth of knowledge, 
truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any 
more than a pint-pot can hold a quart, or a 
quart-pot be filled by a pint. Iron is essentially 
the same everywhere and always ; but the sul- 
phate of iron is never the same as the carbonate 
of iron. Truth is invariable; but the Smithate 
of truth must always differ from the Brownate 
of truth. The Professor. 

September Eighth 
Men are tattooed with their special beliefs 
like so many South Sea Islanders ; but a real 
human heart, with divine love in it, beats with the 
same glow under all the patterns of earth's 
thousand tribes. Elsie Venner. 

September Ninth 
The cut nails of machine-divinity may be 
driven in, but they won't clinch. 

The Professor. 

[89] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

September Tenth 

No more the summer floweret charms, 

The leaves will soon be sere, 
And Autumn folds his jeweled arms 

Around the dying year. 

The Island Hunting Song. 

September Eleventh 

Ah, the young girl ! I am sure that she can 
hide nothing from me. Her skin is so trans- 
parent that one can almost count her heart-beats 
by the flushes they send into her cheeks. She 
does not seem to be shy, either. I think she does 
not know enough of danger to be timid. She 
seems to me like one of those birds that travelers 
tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, 
who, having never received any wrong at the 
hand of man, sliow no alarm at and hardly any 
particular consciousness of his presence. 

The Professor. 

September Twelfth 

A plain girl in a simple dress, if she has only 
a pleasant voice, may seem almost a beauty in 
the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to 
being handsome, the more ornament she will 
bear, and the more she can defy the sunshine 
or the chandelier. The Guardian Angel. 

[90] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
yfK viO^viKytK viv v^v yiV">?<^ w >j< >?< >;<7?^">??7?^>?<";^ 

September Thirteenth 

Peace to the ever murmuring race ! 

And when the latest one 
Shall fold in death her feeble wings 

Beneath the autumn sun, 
Then shall she raise her fainting voice 

And lift her drooping lid, 
And then the child of future years 

Shall hear what Katy did. 

To an Insect. 

September Fourteenth 

It is very easy to criticize other people's 
modes of dealing with their children. Outside 
observers see results ; parents see processes. To 
be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. 

Elsie Venner. 

September Fifteenth 

I think you will find that people who honestly 
mean to be true really contradict themselves 
much more rarely than those who try to be 
"consistent." But a great many things we say 
can be made to appear contradictorj'-, simply 
because they are partial views of a truth, and 
may often look unlike at first, as a front view 
of a face and its profile often do. 

The Professor. 

[91] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yt< V4V wiK y^K yi<if^r7fKyfKyt>i. yi< y^i. yii. y^ v?«c>?^->t<:>;<:>K 

September Sixteenth 

I don't want a woman to weigh me in a bal- 
ance ; there are men enough for that sort of 
work. The judicial character isn't captivating 
in females, sir. A woman fascinates a man 
quite as often by what she overlooks as by what 
she sees. Love prefers twilight to daylight ; 
and a man doesn't think much of, nor care much 
for, a woman outside of his household, unless he 
can couple the idea of love, past, present, or 
future, with her. I don't believe the Devil would 
give half as much for the services of a sinner 
as he would for those of one of these folks that 
are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make 
them unpleasing. The Professor. 

September Seventeenth 

We are all splashed and streaked with senti- 
ments, — not with precisely the same tints, or in 
exactly the same patterns, but by the same hand 
and from the same palette. The Autocrat. 

September Eighteenth 

Like many people of strong and imperious 
temper, he was soft-voiced and very gentle in 
his address, when he had no special reason for 
being otherwise. Elsie Venner. 

[92] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

September Nineteenth 
Now, when genius allies itself with character, 
the world is very apt to think character has the 
best of the bargain, A brilliant woman marries 
a plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual 
mechanism : we have all seen such cases. The 
world often stares a good deal and wonders. 
She should have taken that other, with a far 
more complex mental machinery. She might 
have had a Avatch with the philosophical com- 
pensation-balance, with the metaphysical index, 
which can split a second into tenths, with the 
musical chime which can turn every quarter of 
an hour into melody. She has chosen a plain 
one, that keeps good time, and that is all. 
Let her alone! She knows what she is about. 
Genius has an infinitely deeper reverence for 
character than character can have for genius. 

The Professor. 

September Twentieth 
A man's love is the measure of his fitness for 
good or bad company here or elsewhere. 

Elsie Vermer. 

September Twenty-first 
The most pathetic image in the world to many 
women is that of themselves in tears. 

The Guardian Angel. 

[93] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

September Twenty-second 

She came of a cultivated stock, never rich, 
but long trained to intellectual callings. A 
thousand decencies, amenities, reticences, graces, 
which no one thinks of until he misses them, are 
the traditional right of those who spring from 
such families. Elsie Veniier. 

September Twenty-third 

Once more : speak clearly, if you speak at all ; 
Carve every word before you let it fall. Urania. 

September Twenty-fourth 

Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used, 
like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just 
as porous as the meerschaum ; — the more porous 
it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine 
poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite 
amount of the essence of our own humanity, — 
its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspira- 
tions, so as to be gradually stained through with 
a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. 
So you see it must take time to bring the senti- 
ment of a poem into harmon}'^ with our nature, 
by staining ourselves through every thought 
and image our being can penetrate. 

The Autocrat, 

[91] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>t<? vj< >?< v?< v?»c Hv Viv y;y 7^ >j<>?< v?<c y^c viv viv >iv >j?'"??ic 

September Twenty-fifth 

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; — 

Shall not carved tables serve my turn. 
But all must be of buhl ? 

Give grasping pomp its double share, — 

I ask but one recumbent chair. 

Contentment. 

Septembee Twenty-sixth . 

You forget what a miserable surface-matter 
this language is in which we try to reproduce 
our interior state of being. Articulation is a 
shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we 
toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless 
scribbler's impertinence into our waste-baskets, 
to the gravest utterance which conies from our 
throats in our moments of deepest need, is only 
a space of some three or four inches. Words, 
which are a set of clickings, hissings, hspings, 
and so on, mean very little compared to tones 
and expression of the features. The Professor. 

September Twenty-seventh 

No hfe worth naming ever comes to good 
If always nourished on the self-same food. 

Astrcea. 

[95] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

September Twenty-eighth 

Clear the brown path, to meet his coulter's 

gleam ! 
Lo ! on he comes, behind his smoking team. 
With toil's bright dew-drops on liis sunburnt 

brow. 
The lord of earth, the hero of the plow! 

The PloTvman. 

September Twenty-ninth 

Keep your temper — one angry man is as good 
as another. Elsie Venner. 

September Thirtieth 

He must be a poor creature that does not 
often repeat himself. Imagine the author of 
the excellent piece of advice, "Know thyself," 
never alluding to that sentiment again during 
the course of a protracted existence! Why, 
the truths a man carries about with him are his 
tools ; and do you tliink a carpenter is bound to 
use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty 
board with, or to hang up his hammer after it 
has driven its first nail? A thought is often 
original, though you have uttered it a hundred 
times. It has come to you over a new route, by 
a new and express train of associations. 

The Professor. 

[96] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



OCTOBER 



October First 

Not in the world of light alone, 

Where God has built his blazing throne, 

Nor yet alone in earth below, 

With belted seas that come and go, 

And endless isles of sunlit green, 

Is all thy Maker's glory seen : 

Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 

Eternal wisdom still the same ! 

The Living Temple. 

October Second 

An emotion which can shape itself in language 
opens the gate for itself into the great com- 
munity of human affections. 

Elsie Vernier. 

October Third 

Without wearing any mask we are conscious 
of, we have a special face for each friend. 

The Professor. 

[97] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

October Fourth 

How many "women arc born too finely organ- 
ized in sense and soul for the highway they must 
walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the 
wants of the stronger sex. There are plenty of 
torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their 
stepping-stones are measured b}' the stride of 
man, and not of woman. 

The Professor. 

October Fifth 

But, like a child in ocean's arms, 

We strive against the stream, 
Each moment farther from the shore 

Where life's young fountains gleam; — 
Each moment fainter wave the fields. 

And wider rolls the sea ; 
The mist grows dark, — the sun goes down, — 

Day breaks, — and where are we? 

Departed Days. 

October Sixth 

A gentleman says yes to a great many things 
without stopping to think: a shabby fellow is 
known by his caution in answering questions, 
for fear of compromising his pocket or himself. 

Elsie Vcnner. 

[98] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>?<>i< >t«c 7^ w >j«? >?< y^Ki^yiK w >K vj< w w >??>?«^>i5^ 

October Seventh 
If one has a house which he has hved and 
always means to hve in, he pleases himself with 
the thought of all the conveniences it offers him, 
and thinks little of its wants and imperfections. 
But once having made up his mind to move to 
a better, every incommodity starts out upon 
him, until the very ground-plan of it seems to 
have changed in his mind, and his thoughts and 
affections, each one of them packing up its little 
bundle of circumstances, have quitted their sev- 
eral chambers and nooks and migrated to the 
new home, long before its apartments are ready 
to receive their bodily tenant. The Professor. 

October Eighth 
There never was a guild of dealers or a com- 
pany of craftsmen that did not need sharp 
looking after. The Autocrat. 

October Ninth 
I tell you what, philosopher, if all the longest 

heads 
That ever knocked their sinciputs in stretching 

fine old folks 
Were round one great mahogany, I'd beat those 

fine old folks 
With twenty dishes, twenty fools, and twenty 

clever jokes. Nux Postcosnatica. 

[99] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

October Tenth 

Where, oh where are the visions of morning, 

Fresh as the dews of our prime? 
Gone, hke tenants that quit without warning, 

Down the back entry of time. 

Questions and Answers. 

October Eleventh 
Nobody talks much that doesn't say unwise 
things, things he did not mean to say ; as no 
person plays much without striking a false note 
sometimes. Talk, to me, is only spading up the 
ground for crops of thought. I can't answer 
for what will turn up. If I could, it wouldn't 
be talking, but "speaking my piece." Better, 
I think, the hearty abandonment of one's self to 
the suggestions of the moment, at the risk of 
an occasional slip of the tongue, perceived the 
instant it escapes, but just one syllable too late, 
than the royal reputation of never saying a 
foolish thing. The Professor. 

October Twelfth 
It is wonderful how men and women know 
their peers. If two stranger queens, sole sur- 
vivors of two shipwrecked vessels, were cast, 
half-naked, on a rock together, each would at 
once address the other as "Our Royal Sister." 

Elsie Venner. 

[100 J 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>{< >t< viK v?«c VK >t< VK >;<>K>^ >?<>?<? y^ii^i^y^ 7K"J^ 

October Thirteenth 

Good dressing, quiet ways, low tones of voice, 
lips that can wait, and eyes that do not wander, 
- — shyness of personalities, except in certain in- 
timate communions, — to be light in hand in con- 
versation, to have ideas, but to be able to make 
talk, if necessary, without them, — to belong to 
the company you are in, and not to yourself, — 
to have nothing in your dress or furniture so 
fine that you cannot afford to spoil it and get 
another like it, yet to preserve the harmonies 
throughout your person and dwelling; I should 
say that this was a fair capital of manners to 
begin with. The Professor. 

October Fourteenth 

Self-respect and respect for others, — the 
sensitive consciousness poises itself in these as 
the ship's binnacle balances itself and maintains 
its true level within the two concentric rings 
which suspend it on their pivots. Elsie Venner. 

October Fifteenth 

All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, 
have ruts and grooves in their minds into which 
their conversation is perpetually sliding. 

The Autocrat. 

[101] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

October Sixteenth 

When the first larvae on the elm are seen, 
The crawling wretches, like its leaves, are green ; 
Ere chill October shakes the latest dow^n, 
They, like the foliage, change their tint to 

brown ; 
On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, 
You stretch to pluck it — 'tis a butterfly ; 
The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark. 
They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark. 
So by long living on a single lie. 
Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; 
Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's 

hue, — 
Except when squabbling turns them black and 

blue! Astrcea. 

October Seventeenth 

Man has his will, — but woman has her way ! 

This is It. 
October Eighteenth 

One load of corn goes to the sty, and makes 
the fat of swine, — another goes to the farm- 
house, and becomes the muscle that clothes the 
right arms of heroes. It isn't where a pawn 
stands on the board that makes the difference, 
but what the game round it is when it is on this 
or that square. The Professor. 

[102] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>t<>?«k >j«r yj< vjK >?< vjK >jV7yr>H w >t< >j< >;< >?< 7?? >?<■>?<■ 

October Nineteenth 
Between two breaths what crowded mysteries 

lie, — 
The first short gasp, the last and long-drawn 

sigh! 
Like phantoms painted on the magic slide. 
Forth from the darkness of the past we glide, 
As living shadows for a moment seen 
In airy pageant on the eternal screen. 
Traced by a ray from one unchanging flame, 
Then seek the dust and stillness whence we came. 

Urania. 
October Twentieth 
Our ice-eyed brain-women are really admir- 
able, if we only ask of them just what they can 
give, and no more. The Professor. 

October Twenty-first 
Real Republicanism is stem and severe ; its 
essence is not in forms of government, but in 
the omnipotence of public opinion which grows 
out of it. The Autocrat. 

October Twenty-second 
The difference between the real and the ideal 
objects of love must not exceed a fixed maxi- 
mum. The heart's vision cannot unite them 
stereoscopically into a single image, if the di- 
vergence passes certain limits. Elsie Venner. 

[103] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>?< >?< vi< v?>c>j<r>jir >j< >jojv vt<^ viK yi< y^K >j<7?«r>i^ >t<::^ 

OcTOBEE Twenty-third 

Justice! A good man respects the rights 
even of brute matter and arbitrary symbols. 
If he writes the same word twice in succession, 
by accident, he ahvays erases the one that stands 
second; has not the first-comer the prior right? 
This act of abstract justice, which I trust many 
of my readers, like myself, have often per- 
formed, is a curious anti-illustration, by the 
way, of the absolute wickedness of human dis- 
positions. Why doesn't a man always strike 
out the first of the two words, to gratify his 
diabolical love of injustice? The Prof essor. 

October Twenty-fourth 

What are the great faults of conversation? 
Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, 
are the principal ones, I suppose you think, I 
don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have 
found spoil more good talks than anything else; 
' — long arguments on special points between 
people who differ on the fundamental principles 
upon which these points depend. The Autocrat. 

October Twenty-fifth 

Life is dreadful uncerting, said the poor 
relation. The Professor. 

[104<] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>}< vt< >jvv;< >?>c>3>c>^ yi<yp:'/^ ya yti. yi^. y^ yi^y^yiKy^ 

October Twenty-sixth 

The idea that in this world each young per- 
son is to wait until he or she finds that precise 
counterpart who alone of all creation was meant 
for him or her, and then fall instantly in love 
with it, is pretty enough, only it is not Nature's 
way. It is not at all essential that all pairs of 
human beings should be, as we sometimes say 
of particular couples, "bom for each other." 
Sometimes a man or a woman is made a great 
deal better and happier in the end for having 
had to conquer the faults of the one beloved, 
and make the fitness not found at first, by grad- 
ual assimilation. 

The Professor. 

October Twenty-seventh 

Truants from love, we dream of wrath; 

Oh, rather let us trust the more! 
Through all the wanderings of the path. 

We still can see our Father's door! 

The Crooked Footpaths. 

October Twenty-eighth 

The outward forms the inner man reveal, — 
We guess the pulp before we cut the peel. 

Urania. 

[105] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>j^^j«^ >jy- vjy' >j< vjv vjv >?v >K w w >i< >?< w >?< w >t«^ >isr 

October Twenty-ninth 
I have been a hundred times struck with the 
circumstance that the most remote facts are 
constantly striking each other ; just as vessels 
starting from ports thousands of miles apart 
pass close to each other in the naked breadth 
of the ocean. Tlie Professor. 

October Thirtieth 
Blushing means nothing, in some persons ; in 
others, it betrays a profound inward agitation, 
— a perturbation of the feelings far more try- 
ing than the passions which with many easily 
moved persons break forth in tears. 

Elsie Venner. 

October Thirty-first 
Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree 
in conceding to all males the right of at least 
two distinct looks at every comely female coun- 
tenance, without any infraction of the rules of 
courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first 
look is necessary to define the person of the in- 
dividual one meets so as to avoid it in passing. 
Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance 
is a sufficient apology for a second, not a pro- 
longed and impertinent stare, but an appreci- 
ating homage of the eyes. 

The Autocrat. 

[106] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 



NOVEMBER 



November First 

To those who know the Indian summer of our 
Northern States, it is needless to describe the 
influence it exerts on the senses and the soul. 
The stillness of the landscape in that beautiful 
time is as if the planet were sleeping, like a top, 
before it begins to rock with the winds of au- 
tunm. All natures seem to find themselves more 
truly in its light ; love grows more tender, mem- 
ory sees farther back into the past. 

The Guardian Angel. 

November Second 
Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it 

straight to me ; 
The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the 

liquid be; 
And may the cherubs on its face protect me 

from the sin, 
That dooms one to those dreadful words, — 
"My dear, where have you been?" 

On Lending a Punch-Bowl. 

[107] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

NovEMBEE Third 
Where, oh where are Hfe's HIies and roses, 

Nursed in the golden dawn's smile? 
Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses, 
On the old banks of the Nile. 

Questions and Answers. 

November Fourth 

Talking is like playing on the harp ; there is 
as much in laying the hand on the strings to 
stop their vibrations as in twanging them to 
bring out their music. 

The Autocrat. 

November Fifth 

Oh, what a precious book the one would be 
That taught observers what they're not to see! 

Urania. 

November Sixth 

Perhaps too far in these considerate days 
Has Patience carried her submissive ways ; 
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek. 
To take one blow and turn the other cheek ; 
It is not written what a man shall do, 
If the rude caitiff strike the other too ! 

Astrcea. 

I 108 ] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

NovEMBEE Seventh 

Sing the sweet song of other days, 

Serenely placid, safely true. 
And o'er the present's parching ways 

Thy verse distills like evening dew. 

But speak in words of living power, — 
They fall like drops of scalding rain 

That plashed before the burning shower 
Swept o'er the cities of the plain ! 

Saint Anthony, the Reformer. 

November Eighth 

A man's opinions, look you, are generally of 
much more value than his arguments. These 
last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does 
not believe the proposition they tend to prove 
— as is often the case with paid lawyers ; but 
opinions are formed by our whole nature — 
brain, heart, instinct, brute life, everything all 
our experience has shaped for us by contact 
with the whole circle of our being. 

The Professor. 

November Ninth 

The true essentials of a feast are only fun 
and feed. Nux Postcoenatica. 

[ 109 ] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
7^ y^ '/^ vtK '/;< viK WiK 'j^y^yiK >j>f -^ >j< >?<; 'j^yi^T^yfK 

November Tenth 

I love you is all the secret that many, nay, 
most women have to tell. When that is said, 
they are like China-crackers on the morning of 
the fifth of July. And just as that little patri- 
otic implement is made with a slender train 
which leads to the magazine in its interior, so 
a sharp eye can almost always see the train 
leading from a young girl's e^'e or lip to the 
"I love you" in her heart. The Professor. 

November Eleventh 

On the whole, I had ratlicr judge men's minds 
by comparing their thoughts with my own, than 
judge of thoughts by knowing who utter them. 
I must do one or the other. It docs not follow, 
of course, that I may not recognize another 
man's thoughts as broader and deeper than my 
own ; but that does not necessarily change my 
opinion, otherwise this would be at the mercy 
of every superior mind that held a different 
one. The Autocrat. 

November Twelfth 

Look in his face, to meet thy neighbor's soul, 
Not on his garments, to detect a hole. 

Urania. 

[110] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

November Thirteenth 

The rapidity with which ideas grow old in 
our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares 
of their importance. Their apparent age runs 
up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as 
they increase in magnitude. A great calamity, 
for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour 
after it has happened. It stains backward 
through all the leaves we have turned over in the 
book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood 
is dry on the page we are turning. For this we 
seem to have lived ; it was foreshadowed in 
dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat 
of terror ; in the "dissolving views" of dark 
day-visions ; all omens pointed to it ; all paths 
led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness 
of the first sleep that follows such an event, it 
comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking ; 
in a few moments it is old again, — old as 
eternity. The Autocrat. 

November Fourteenth 

All of us have a little speck of fight under- 
neath our peace and good-will to men — just a 
speck, for revolutions and great emergencies, 
you know — so that we should not submit to be 
trodden quite flat by the first heavy-heeled ag- 
gressor that came along. The Professor. 

[Ill] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
■y^ >j< >jv 7?^>j^ >?< yfi. yiK^iiryiK >k vjv v?< >jvv;*t -j^-??*?--?!? 

November Fifteenth 

How many of our cherished behefs are like 
those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, 
that serve us well so long as we keep them in our 
hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them 
down! The Autocrat. 

November Sixteenth 

As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet 

Breathes soft the Alpine rose, 
So, through life's desert springing sweet 

The flower of friendship grows. 

A Song of Other Days. 

November Seventeenth 

Stillness of person and steadiness of features 
are signal marks of good-breeding. Vulgar 
persons can't sit still, or at least, they must 
work their limbs or features. The Professor. 

November Eighteenth 

Children of wealth or want, to each is given 
One spot of green, and all the blue of heaven ! 
Enough, if tliese their outward shows impart; 
The rest is thine, — the scenery of the heart. 

Urania. 

[112] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yfi vfi. yfK Vi<. y^K -^^ y^K yii<yii. >t< >?< v^^tjv; >j< >?<c7js:7??7?c 

NovEMBEE Nineteenth 

The feeble seabirds, blinded In the storms, 
On some tall lighthouse dash their httle forms, 
And the rude granite scatters for their pains 
Those small deposits that were meant for brains. 
Yet the proud fabric in the morning's sun 
Stands all unconscious of the mischief done ; 
Still the red beacon pours its evening rays 
For the lost pilot with as full a blaze, 
Nay, shines, all radiance, o'er the scattered 

fleet 
Of gulls and boobies brainless at its feet. 

From a Medical Poem, 

November Twentieth 

What is it, of all your experiences, of all your 
thoughts, of all your misdoings, that lies at 
the very bottom of the great heap of acts of 
consciousness which make up your past life? 
What should you most dishke to tell your 
nearest friend? Be so good as to pause for a 
brief space, and shut the volume you hold, with 
your finger between the pages. Oh, that is it! 

The Autocrat. 

November Twenty-first 

The man implies the woman. 

The Professor. 

[113] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

yiK y^K yfK '/if '/iK >?<7??-??«:>K>?^>?ir>?^>K>K>;^>;^">^7?^ 

November Twenty-second 

I tell you this odd thing: there are a good 
many persons, who, through the habit of mak- 
ing other folks uncomfortable, by finding fault 
with all their cheerful enjoyments, at last get 
up a kind of hostility to comfort in general, 
even in their own persons. The correlative to 
loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating our- 
selves as we hate our neighbors. 

The Professor. 

November Twenty-third 

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays 
The pleasing game of interchanging praise. 

Terpsichore. 

November Twenty-fourth 

Gentility is a fine thing, not to be under- 
valued; but humanity comes before that. 

The Professor. 

November Twenty-fifth 

For baser tribes the rivers flow 
That know not wine or song; 

Man wants but little drink below, 
But wants that Httle strong. 

A Song of Other Days. 

[lU] 



FROI^I DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

November Twenty-sixth 
Truth's sleepless watchman on her midnight 

tower, 
Whose lamp burns brightest when the tempests 

lower — 
Oh, who can tell with what a leaden flight 
Drag the long watches of his weary night ; 
While at his feet the hoarse and blinding gale 
Strews the torn wreck and bursts the fragile 

sail, 
When stars have faded, when the wave is dark. 
When rocks and sands embrace the foundering 

bark, 
And still he pleads with unavailing cry. 
Behold the light, O wanderer, look or die! 

A Modest Request. 

November Twenty-seventh 
People never hear their own voices, — any 
more than they see their own faces. There is 
not even a looking-glass for the voice. Of 
course, there is something audible to us when 
we speak; but that something is not our own 
voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. 
How pleasant it would be, if in another state 
of being we could have shapes like our own for- 
mer selves for playthings ! 

The Autocrat. 

[115] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

y^KH^Ky^i. yi< >?< '^ yt< vjo^TprTj^T^rTj^-VK^KT^^j^^K 

November Twenty-eighth 

Once in a while one meets with a single soul 
greater than all the living pageant that passes 
before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his 
study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and 
weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so 
there are meek, slight women who have weighed 
all that this planetary life can offer, and hold 
it like a bauble in the palm of their slender 
hands. The Autocrat. 

November Twenty-ninth 

Conceit is just as natural a thing to human 
minds as a center is to a circle. The Professor. 

November Thirtieth 

I am too much a lover of genius, I sometimes 
think, and too often get impatient with dull 
people, so that, in their weak talk, where noth- 
ing is taken for granted, I look forward to some 
future possible state of development, when a 
gesture passing between a beautiful human soul 
and an archangel shall signify as much as the 
complete history of a planet. Yet, when a strong 
brain is weighed with a true heart, it seems to me 
like balancing a bubble against a wedge of gold. 

The Professor. 

[IIG] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
DECEMBER 

December First 

Behold the rocky wall 

That down its sloping sides 
Pours the swift raindrops, blending, as they 
fall. 

In rushing river-tides ! 

Yon stream, whose sources run 

Turned by a pebble's edge, 
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun 

Through the cleft mountain-ledge. 

The slender rill had strayed. 

But for the slanting stone, 
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid 

Of foam-flecked Oregon. 

So from the heights of Will 

Life's parting stream descends. 
And, as a moment turns its slender rill, 

Each widening torrent bends, — 

From the same cradle's side. 

From the same mother's knee, — 
One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 

One to the Peaceful Sea! 

The Two Streams. 

[in] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

December Second 

What is there quite so profoundly human as 
an old man's memory of a mother who died in 
his earlier years? Mother she remains till man- 
hood, and by-and-by she grows to be as a sis- 
ter ; and at last, when, wrinkled and bowed and 
broken, he looks back upon her in her fair 
youth, he sees in the sweet image he caresses 
not his parents, but, as it were, his child. 

The Professor. 

December Third 

Women decant their affections, sweet and 
sound, out of the old bottles into the new ones, 
— off from the lees of the last generation, clear 
and bright, into the clean vessels just made 
ready to receive it. The Guardian Angel. 

December Fourth 

After all, if we think of it, most of the 
world's loves and friendships have been between 
people that could not read nor spell. 

The Autocrat. 

December Fifth 

A man always loves a woman, and a woman 
a man, unless some good reason exists to the 
contrary. Elsie Venner. 

[118] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>j< >?< vjv v?«k y^y Hv Hv y;v>?< >t< v?< Hv viv yiv yiy7?^>??7ir 

Decembee Sixth 

Women are such strange creatures ! Is there 
any trick that love and their own fancies do 
not play them? Just see how they marry ! 

The Professor. 

December Seventh 

Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for 
it, is always imposing. The Autocrat. 

December Eighth 

Lord of all life, below, above. 

Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, 

Before thy ever-blazing throne 

We ask no luster of our own. 

Grant us thy truth to make us free. 
And kindling hearts that burn for thee. 
Till all thy hving altars claim 
One holy light, one heavenly flame! 

A Sun-Day Hymn. 

December Ninth 

It isn't what a man thinks or says, but when 
and where and to whom he thinks and says it. 

The Professor. 

[119] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

VJV VJV >!>(>?< HV >JV V^ VJ^T^ViV ViV ViV >JV ViK >?«C7??>J^7?C 

December Tenth 
The pledge of Friendship ! it is still divine, 
Though watery floods have quenched its burn- 
ing wine; 
Whatever vase the sacred drops may hold, 
The gourd, the shell, the cup of beaten gold. 
Around its brim the hand of Nature throws 
A garland sweeter than the banquet's rose. 
Bright are the blushes of the vine-wreathed 

bowl. 
Warm with the sunshine of Anacreon's soul, 
But dearer memories gild the tasteless wave 
That fainting Sidney perished as he gave. 

A Sentiment. 

December Eleventh 
It does not follow that I wish to be pickled in 
brine because I like a salt-water plunge. 

The Professor. 

December Twelfth 
Money kept for two or three generations 
transforms a race, — I don't mean merely in 
manners and hereditary culture, but in blood 
and bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in 
which children grow up more kindly, of course, 
than in close, back streets ; it buys country 
places to give them happy and healthy summers. 

The Autocrat. 

[120] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

>jv yj< >jOix ■Mt'i. yt<i. yt< yt^yp:yii< Viv >K vj< vjv >K>?*r>t*r">?ir 

December Thirteenth 

My broken Mirror ! faithless, j^et beloved, 

Thou who canst smile, and smile alike on all. 

Oft do I leave thee, oft again return, 
I scorn the siren, but obey the call ; 

I hate thy falsehood, while I fear thy truth, 

But most I love thee, flattering friend of youth. 

To My Companions. 

December Fourteenth 

All we can do with books of human experi- 
ence is to make them alive again with something 
borrowed from our own lives. We can make a 
book alive for us just in proportion to its re- 
semblance in essence or in form to our own 
experience. The Autocrat. 

December Fifteenth 

The soul, having studied the article of which 
it finds itself proprietor, thinks, after a time, 
it knows it pretty well. But there is this dif- 
ference between its view and that of a person 
looking at us: — we look from within, and see 
nothing but the mould formed by the elements 
in which we are incased: other observers look 
from without, and see us as living statues. 

The Professor. 

[m] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

December Sixteenth 

Not in the world of light alone, 

Where God has built His blazing throne, 

Nor yet alone in earth below, 

With belted seas that come and go, 

And endless isles of sunlit green, 

Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 

Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 

Eternal wisdom still the same ! 

The Living Temple. 

December Seventeekth 

I hope I love good people, not for their sake, 
but for my own. The Professor. 

December Eighteenth 

A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms 
and crises which are so often met with in cre- 
ative or intensely perceptive natures, is the 
best basis for love or friendship. 

The Autocrat. 

December Nineteenth 

Be firm ! one constant element in luck 
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck ; 
See you tall shaft ; it felt the earthquake's thrill, 
Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still. 

Urania. 

[122] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
>?<>?<>?<>?< >j< v?< >?v vjv7tr>t< '/^yi^yi^y^ >j<>?»c>?<7??^ 

December Twentieth 

Though temples crowd the crumbled brink 
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, 

Their tablets bold with what we thinks 
Their echoes dumb to what we know; 

That one unquestioned text we read. 
All doubt beyond, all fear above. 

Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed 
Can burn or blot it: God is Love! 

What We All Think. 

December Twenty-first 

I am proud to say, that Nature has so far en- 
riched me, that I cannot own so much as a duck 
without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever 
swam. The Autocrat. 

December Twenty-second 

And what if court or castle vaunt 

Its children loftier born? — 
Who heeds the silken tassel's flaunt 

Beside the golden corn? 
They ask not for the dainty toil 

Of ribboned knights and earls, 
The daughters of the virgin soil. 

Our free-born Yankee girls ! 

Our Yankee Girls, 

[123] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 
v*x ^4*. J-4X Aix xix x*x xix xiy >?v vfv >;< >?< 7?«rs?? >?>r??«:>?<:7pr 

December Twenty-third 

Home of our childhood! how affection clings 
And hovers round thcc with her seraph wings! 
Dearer thy hills, though clad in autumn brown, 
Than fairest summits which the cedars crown ! 
Sweeter the fragrance of thy summer breeze 
Than all Arabia breathes along the seas ! 
The stranger's gale wafts home the exile's sigh, 
For the heart's temple is its own blue sky! 
Poetry — A Metrical Essay. 

December Twenty-fourth 

'Tis the heart's current lends the cup its glow, 
Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may 
flow. A Sentiment. 

December Twenty-fifth 

The choral host had closed the angel's strain 
Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem's 

plain ; 
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way. 
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay. 

"Joy, joy to earth ! Behold the hallowed morn ! 
In David's city Christ the Lord is born! 
'Glory to God I' let angels shout on high, — 
'Good-will to men!' the listening Earth reply!" 

A Mother's Secret. 

[12J.] 



FROM DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

December Twenty-sixth 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 

In the spring, 
Let them smile, as I do now. 
At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. The Last Leaf. 

December Twenty-seventh 

Life, as we call it, is nothing but the edge 
of the boundless ocean of existence where it 
comes on soundings. In this view, I do not see 
anything so fit to talk about, or half so inter- 
esting, as that which relates to the innumerable 
majority of our fellow-creatures, the dead-liv- 
ing, who are hundreds of thousands to one of 
the live-living, and with whom we all potentially 
belong. The Professor. 

December Twenty-eighth 

Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church 
of St. Mark, and her Casa d'Oro, and the rest 
of her golden houses ; and Venice had great 
pictures and good music ; and Venice had a 
Golden Book, in which all the large tax-payers 
had their names written ; — But all that did not 
make Venice the brain of Italy. I'he Professor. 

[125] 



FRO:\I DAY TO DAY WITH HOLMES 

December Twenty-ninth 

Call him not old, whose visionary brain 
Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. 
For him in vain the envious seasons roll 
Who bears eternal summer in his soul. 
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, 
Spring with her birds, or children with their 

play, 
Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art 
Stir the few life-drops creeping round his 

heart, — 
Turn to the record where his years are told, — 
Count his gray hairs, — they cannot make him 

old ! Call Him Not Old. 

December Thirtieth 

God bless all good women! — to their soft 
hands and pitying hearts we must all come at 
last! TJie Autocrat. 

December Thirty-first 

We will not speak of years to-night; 

For what have years to bring, 
But larger floods of love and light 

And sweeter songs to sing? 

At a Birthduy Festival, 

[126] 



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